


Lights Out

by Avelera



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Bottom Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, But Ch. 12 will be self contained and skippable, Canon-Typical Violence, Car Chases, Comedy, Crusades, Culture Shock, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Fist Fights, Gun Violence, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Historical Accuracy, Historical References, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Immortality, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova are in Love, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani is an Incurable Romantic, M/M, Memory Loss, Muslim Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Has Catholic Guilt, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Pre-Canon, Rating will change to E at Ch. 12, Rimming, Roma | Rome, Roman Catholicism, Storytelling, Swordfighting, Temporary Amnesia, Temporary Character Death, Tender Sex, The Amnesiac Nicky fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:20:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 60,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26817253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelera/pseuds/Avelera
Summary: When a mission goes wrong, the Old Guard team discovers to their consternation that Nicky has forgotten his entire life back to his first death. Which is especially unfortunate because, at the time of Nicky’s first death, he was a murderous Crusader hell-bent on killing Joe.Now, stuck in their safe house with a furious religious fanatic who believes the Siege of Jerusalem was that morning and he’s been kidnapped by his enemies, Andy, Booker, and Joe struggle to figure out how to restore Nicky’s memories, while Joe faces the prospect of a future where he never does.(Rating changed from T to E as of Ch. 12, however, there are notes so the chapter can be skipped to maintain a T rating if the reader so chooses.)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 917
Kudos: 1042





	1. Joe

**Author's Note:**

> This story is primarily based on the appearances and personalities of the characters from the film version of “The Old Guard” but borrows in places from the comic to fill in gaps. Knowledge of the comic may add some enjoyment, but is not at all necessary to the story, as all relevant details borrowed from it are explained within the text.
> 
> I originally _intended_ this fic to be a slap-stick, one-shot comedy but it's now a ~60,000-word novel. Obviously, as often happens with my stories, it got away from me. Now there's a great deal more angst (thanks to Joe) and plot (thanks to everything else) but I do hope the comedy roots are still visible in the structure.  
>   
>  **Note on Italics:** Translated Medieval Ligurian and modern Italian will be represented by full sentences in italics while in Joe’s point-of-view. Otherwise, if English or another language is spoken, it will be represented in plain text as-is unless there’s emphasis on a word. This is to help clarify when Nicolò can understand what is being said. The opposite is true for Nicky’s POV, where words are italicized for emphasis or to show he does not understand them. Hopefully, it won't be too confusing!  
>    
> **Content Warning:** The term “Saracen” is employed in this work to accurately portray the worldview of a character from a specific time and place in history. The word itself has a complicated history as an archaic and inaccurate term used by Europeans to describe the people (mostly Muslims) that they encountered in the Middle East, one that eventually took on negative connotations bordering on (or crossing into) use as a slur. The character’s use of the term is intended to denote _ignorance_ , and should not be construed as a view shared or endorsed by the author, or seen as anything other than as a negative character trait. 
> 
> **Rating:** This story will have a self-contained, explicit chapter at Ch. 12. The rating will be increased once that chapter goes up BUT I will provide notes for anyone who wishes to skip it without missing anything. 
> 
> My ETERNAL thanks to yaaurens, otachidyke, owldork1998 and rainglazed for their assistance as beta readers and cheerleaders. This story would simply NOT exist without them to help me through the hard parts. 
> 
> To follow updates on this story, go to my Tumblr blog, username: Avelera, and the tag "TOG-fic". 
> 
> Final *two* chapters should be up by the end of the year, apologies for the delay.

**Rome, Italy - Summer of 2008**

Nicky fell.

In their headlong scramble down the alley, Joe thought at first that Nicky had tripped, and was already reaching back to help him to his feet when he registered the sound of the gunshot and that Nicky had just… stopped.

“Nicolò, dai, avanti,” Joe muttered. Further down the rain-slicked cobblestones of Rome, Booker and Andy slowed to a jog and cast nervous glances back over their shoulders. The wailing of the sirens behind them rose to a scream.

That was when he saw it: the smear of red in Nicky’s hair and beneath it, a bullet wound gaping, splitting the back of his skull like a rotten plum. Even as Joe watched, the wound shrank, puckering at the edges. But they didn’t have time to wait for Nicky to get back on his feet.

 _“Shit,”_ Joe hissed and bent to drag Nicky over his shoulder like a shepherd with a lost lamb. Once secured, he waved Andy and Booker on. “Go! I’ve got him!”

The hidden path to the safe house was only a block away, down a flight of stairs below the street level and through a utility cellar door that just happened to open up into another, more ancient tunnel. One that, a century before, connected the home of a prominent bishop to the apartments he’d gifted to his favorite mistress. That this mistress had taken a liking to a certain Scythian warrior woman and left her the property in her will was particularly useful now. Joe tumbled panting through the doorway, clutching Nicky’s wrist and ankle to keep him steady, while Booker swore and kicked the rusted metal shut the second Joe was in.

A flashlight switched on, illuminating a damp, musty hallway that smelled like the underground graveyard of the catacombs. Andy held up a hand to stop Booker from resuming their dash to the safe house and turned back to comb her long fingers through Nicky’s bloodstained hair.

“Nicky,” Andy whispered. “Are you still with us?”

“He was healing when I picked him up,” Joe reassured her, reassured himself really, even while his chest tightened instinctively every time he heard those hushed words.

“Where was the wound?”

“Back of his head. Lucky shot, the bastards must have been firing blind down the alley.”

Andy hummed in acknowledgment. Her fingers brushed Nicky’s hair straight again. “Well, the wound’s gone, so that’s something.”

“Then why won’t he wake up?” Booker peered over Andy’s shoulder, his solemn features lined with concern. “Nicky, come on, we have to hurry. Joe can’t carry you the whole way.”

“Yes, I can,” Joe interrupted with a glance down at Nicky’s face, pale and slack hanging just above his shoulder. Was he breathing? He had to be. “I can carry him as long as he needs. Forever, if I must.”

Andy sighed but the quirk of her lips carried centuries of fond exasperation. “At least it’s not far.”

The way was dark and winding, but Joe followed the shadowed outlines of Booker and Andy, listening for Nicky’s breathing and finding it, hearing it grow stronger and more steady with each labored step he walked. He clutched Nicky’s wrist and ankle tighter, waiting. Waiting for Nicky to say something, to struggle and protest that he could walk now, that he was healed.

But he didn’t. Not even when the mellow light of the safe house’s parlor flooded the passageway. The group stepped through the concealed door at the back of the coat closet into a plushly decorated parlor that appeared untouched since the 70s. Possibly the 1870s, if the layer of dust was any indication. Nicky didn’t stir when Joe stumbled past Andy and Booker over to a low, rose-colored chaise longue and lay Nicky down, heedless of the blood in his hair that stained the musty velvet.

The floor creaked as Andy and Booker gathered around him. He could feel the tension in their bearing as if they all shared one body, one breath, but his eyes never moved from Nicky. Nicky, whose throat worked as he breathed, but they had all taken worse wounds and woken sooner. Why wouldn’t he _wake up?_

"Nicolò, amor mio, ti prego, destati,” Joe whispered and began gently shaking Nicolò, while a small, hysterical part of him wanted to shake Nicky harder, just to see him move. " _Nicolò?_ Nicky!”

A slap rang through the air and he jolted as Andy retracted her hand and shook it out. The shout of outrage that rose to Joe’s lips died as he saw the shadow in Andy’s eyes, the taut muscle in her cheeks and how pale she was as she stared down at Nicky, afraid, just like he was. Perhaps it was not the same fear, to the same extent, because no one could feel that much. But her fear was fear for Nicky so he swallowed his anger and turned back to Nicky.

… Who was at that moment opening his eyes.

Joe released an explosive gasp of relief and settled back on his heels, before leaning forward to wrap his arms around Nicky and put his head against his chest. He closed his eyes and just _listened_ to his heartbeat, sending one of an uncountable number of silent prayers in thanks to Allah that it was there.

Except Nicky stiffened beneath him. There were hands shoving him away. Nicky’s hands.

Joe pulled back and looked down at Nicky in confusion to find Nicky staring at him, his eyes wide, then darting about the room in confusion and… and terror. In a low, rough voice, Nicky snarled, “Chi sei?”

There was a sharp intake of breath behind him from Andy and a muffled grunt of shock from Booker. Joe only noted them vaguely, as if they came from far away. Those two words thudded into his body like barbed arrows. _Chi sei?_

Who are you?

Nicky pushed himself upright on the couch as Joe fell back onto his knees. Nicky’s eyes were hard and suspicious as he took in the room. His brow furrowed. “ _A woman…and a Saracen_?” His gaze fell on Booker and locked on him. “ _You, are you a Christian? What is going on here, where is the rest of the army?_ ”

Booker took a halting step forward, casting a bewildered glance between Joe and Andy, before switching to Italian. _“Yes, I am a Christian. At least, I was. What army,_ Nicky _?"_

But Nicky was frowning up at Booker in confusion. “ _Ni-cchi? No, sir, I am Nicolò, of Genova. I arrived with the other princes from Antioch. What lord do you serve? I do not recognize you from the army and your dialect is strange. I can barely understand you.”_

Booker’s brow furrowed. " _Seriously? Come on, Nicky, you and Joe need to stop fucking around. This isn’t the time for jokes. We’ve got to clear this place by tomorrow before any friends of those traffickers find us._ ”

With each word, Nicky’s eyebrows rose and he pulled away from Booker as if he could force himself through the back of the chaise longue. “ _…What? Sir, I beg you, slow down._ ”

“ _Slow down? Nicky, I’m speaking_ your _fucking_ _language. What do you mean slow down?_ ”

Joe barked a laugh. He dragged a hand through his hair, catching and clenching around his curls in disbelief. “Booker, you’re not speaking his language because he’s not speaking _Italian_. That’s Ligurian, _old_ Ligurian. I don’t think I’ve heard it outside our bedroom in... in centuries.”

Horror thrilled inside him. Possibilities plucked at his mind that were too ridiculous, too overwhelming to entertain. His brain and his heart and his body could not come to terms with what was before him, with Nicky’s face twisted in bafflement, looking at him with the same lack of familiarity that they’d left behind a millennium ago, bleeding out on a battlefield. The very sound of this dialect spoken in anger transported Joe to another time and place, one that smelled of horses, and dust, and more often than not of blood.

Booker rounded on him, retorting in English, “Then you talk to him, Joe! For fuck’s sake, I’m sorry I don’t speak a dead Italian dialect from a thousand years ago!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Joe saw Nicky cross himself, his eyes widening at their words, which might well sound like incomprehensible heathen babble to him as he whispered, “ _Diavoli_ ,” under his breath. _Devils_.

“Peace! Forget I said anything,” Joe snapped. Already he could feel the old words creeping into his mind, altering his speech, in the same way donning his old armor might change his gait. “He can probably still understand your Italian. Just speak slowly, like he _asked_.”

Booker stared. “ _Still_ understand? What is that supposed to mean, Joe? I swear, if this is some stupid prank the two of you have cooked up…”

“Oh yeah, like we’d set up a prank where I let Nicky get _shot in the head_ in the middle of a fucking mission against human _fucking_ traffickers! Got any more brilliant ideas, Booker?”

“Shut up, both of you! It’s not a prank. Something is wrong,” Andy’s voice cut through like a knife. She knelt down beside Joe and looked up at Nicky, searching his eyes. When she spoke it was in the very same dialect of ancient Ligurian Nicky taught her and Quynh in Baghdad, almost eight centuries ago. “ _Nicolò, you must be calm. Tell us what you remember_.”

Nicky frowned, glancing from Joe and Booker back to Andy, looking baffled by the sight of this lithely muscled woman wearing the clothing of a man, with her hair uncovered and her arms bare, but the defensive set of Nicky’s shoulders relaxed somewhat at the sound of his mother tongue. “ _I—I was with the army of the faithful. We reached the Holy City five Sundays ago and laid siege. Tomorrow…no, wait, it was today…this morning, when the siege weapons my people brought from Genova broke through the walls. I saw them come down. There was a man, a Saracen…_ ”

Nicky’s frown deepened and his gaze flicked over to Joe, searching his face as if trying to solve a puzzle. “ _Much like this one, but his hair and beard were longer. I charged him and after that... there was nothing. Not until I woke up here, in this strange place._ ” He raised his chin. “ _So I ask you, woman, where am I, and why am I here? If I am captive, then you must know there are those who would pay my ransom, for if you intended to kill me you would have done so before I woke.”_

" _No one is going to kill you, Nicolò,_ ” Andy said gently. “ _I am Andromache, this is Sebastiano who we call_ Booker, _he is of the Franks, and this is J—Yusuf. You are right, he is a Saracen, but he will never harm you, this I swear. You took a wound in battle that has affected your mind. We ask you to be calm while we find a way to heal you._ ”

Nicky recoiled from her and his jaw tightened in surprise, in disbelief shaded with fear. _“There was a chevalier in Antioch… a Turk knocked him from his horse and after the battle, he did not remember the journey to the Holy Land, he thought he was still in Paris. That night, he passed in his sleep...”_ He looked up to meet Andy’s eye. “ _Is that what happened to me?”_

“ _Yes, Nicolò, but I promise_ ,” Andy smiled sadly, “ _you will not die. You are safe here and among friends._ ”

“ _I have no_ friends _among the Saracens,_ ” Nicky spat, shooting a glare on Joe. “ _What is he, a slave, a captive? Or are all of us captives in this… this place?”_ He looked down at himself. _“If I am among friends, then where are my clothes and armor? Where is my_ sword _?_ ”

“Don’t.” Joe held out his arm in front of Booker just as the man began to move.

“It might calm him down to have it. Maybe help him remember,” Booker countered. “Wouldn’t you feel better to not be helpless in a strange place? This is _Nicky_ , he’s not going to hurt us, and it’s not like it would matter if he did!”

Joe smiled wryly. Or he tried to, but his lips stubbornly refused to obey. He firmed them to a stubborn line to stop their trembling, and his voice was rough as he said, “That is the Nicky you know, and the one I love. But if this is… anything like what I fear, then this is the Nicky I met outside Jerusalem. The one who killed me. So trust me when I say it would not be wise to give my love a sword right now.”

“You two, leave,” Andy declared and Joe stared at her in shock. “Booker, find us a doctor who will check him out. Someone _discreet_ who takes cash and doesn’t ask questions. Joe…” she frowned, the pain in her eyes belying the brusqueness of her tone, “go wash up and get ahold of yourself. You’re no help to Nicky covered in his blood.”

* * *

Joe leaned against the kitchen counter, if only to stop himself from pacing now that he had showered and started dinner. The frozen lasagna they had stocked before going on the mission was in the oven and there was nothing else to do now but wait.

He could hear the low murmur of Andy and Nicky’s voices from the parlor even now, as Andy attempted to soothe him. He wondered how much she told him. Wondered if even now she worked to prepare him for the strange world of mechanical monsters just outside the boarded-up windows of the safe house. Or, if even a half-hour later she was still reassuring him that he need not fear a knife in the back. A reassurance that Joe as a foreigner, a _Saracen_ , could do nothing to help with.

The frozen lasagna was supposed to be a last resort, in case they were too tired to cook after freeing those women from the traffickers. There’d been fresh food in the fridge that Nicky picked out the day before, excited to be back in his homeland with its artisanal markets, and promising them a feast fit for kings that night when they returned. Joe had not touched those, even as he had craved something to keep his hands busy. Nicky would kill him if he did, maybe literally.

Nicky would be back any moment now, Joe told himself. By tomorrow even, once he had some real sleep and gave his body time to relax. Their wounds had healed slowly before. Andy just needed to keep Nicky calm until then.

But it should be him in there, _he_ should be the one comforting his beloved and holding his hand when he was afraid. But Nicky didn’t trust him now. Nicky didn’t seem to _know_ him, except as a face filled with hatred glimpsed in the last second before his death. Nicky didn’t even know that was only his first death or how many thousands of deaths he’d had since that day in Jerusalem.

Joe swallowed and took a deep breath in a fruitless effort to calm himself. This was temporary, a strange fluke in the long years of their immortality. Nicky still lived, still healed, and somehow they would find a way to bring him back to himself.

…Unless he didn’t heal. Unless his body pushing out the bullet was the last gasp of their inexplicable ability, with no strength left to repair the damage left in its wake.

“Hey.” Joe startled as Andy slouched into the kitchen, and the thin line of her mouth told him without words that there was no miraculous good news. “I think he’s calm enough to see you now without trying to kill you. I told him…shit, I’m sorry, Joe,” Andy bit her lip and winced as she said, “but he wouldn’t accept that you’re not a threat until I said you were a convert, that you became a Christian when you saw the army of the faithful outside Jerusalem. At least he seemed to accept that. Fucking Crusaders. Nicky really lightened up over the years, huh?”

Joe smiled joylessly. “You have no idea. It was years before we didn’t expect to wake to the other’s knife in our back, even after we became lovers. That was a good idea, saying I’m a convert, I wish I’d thought of it. Those Christians _loved_ to hear stories about infidels converting to their Messiah.”

“Yeah, I remember," Andy grimaced. "That's what I was counting on.”

Joe’s fingers tightened on the countertops as the silence stretched between them. “Can I see him now?”

“Your choice. I drew him a bath so he could clean the blood out of his hair, gave him some space, but if you really think he’d be happy to have a ‘Saracen dog’ wash his back, then be my guest,” Andy said, her lips twisting in a rough approximation of a smile before she sighed and hung her head ruefully. “Fuck if I know, Joe. You met him a century before any of us did. I want to say that if anyone can figure this out, it’s you. We’re probably overreacting and that bullet just rang his bell a little. Hell, he might be back to normal before whatever bone-saw Booker finds even shows up.”

“Or, maybe he’ll be like this for years,” Joe said tightly, “or forever. If _you_ haven’t seen anything like this, that means none of us have. I can’t just wait by the sidelines and hope Nicky comes back to himself on his own. I need to be there for him.”

“I don’t know, Joe. Even with the lie, I think he might stab you as soon as look at you. It really sounds like the siege was this morning for him. Bloodthirsty and on edge barely covers it.”

Joe closed his eyes, remembered looking out from the ramparts to the ragged army at the gates, their siege engines cobbled together from broken ships. Three years of marching, and fighting, and starving to reach Jerusalem, Nicky later told him. The army of the faithful had wept at the sight of Jerusalem and not shed a tear at the oceans of blood they spilled to take it. They had waited too long and suffered too much to care.

And _that_ was the last day Nicky remembered.

“A bloodthirsty Crusader? Hardly something I haven’t handled before.” Joe forced a smile he didn’t feel. “I won his trust once. How hard could it be to do it again?”

“Didn’t you say it took fifty years before you stopped killing each other on sight?” Andy said with a raised eyebrow.

Joe chuckled under his breath and shrugged. “Details.”

* * *

Joe hesitated outside the bathroom door when he found it ajar. In his arms was a bundle of clothes: a long, loose shirt and linen trousers that were the closest he could find to something Nicky might find familiar. The shirt was Joe’s own, and a small part of him hoped the fabric’s familiar scent might succeed where words had failed to bring Nicky's memory back.

The sound of sloshing water came from within and he craned his neck to catch a glimpse through the crack, just to be sure Nicky was there and not at that very moment trying to pry off the boards covering the windows and make his escape. It would be just like Nicky to feign acceptance of Andromache’s words until their backs were turned. It’s what Joe would have done. Hell, it’s what both of them _had_ done more than once in their long history.

 _“Skulking in the shadows, Saracen?”_ Nicky’s voice came from within. _“What do you hope to gain, lingering outside the door like a thief?”_

Joe sighed and pushed open the door to the bathroom. Inside, Nicky reclined in a clawfoot porcelain tub. There was a time when no woman of high society would be without such a fashionable item for her toilette, but now the sight clashed before Joe’s eyes: the antique bath from a gilded era long past, and the man within it, whose cold gaze held the memory of an era older still, one long crumbled to dust.

Yet even with the hard glint in Nicky’s eyes, the suspicion that clenched in the muscles of his cheek, the sight of his bare chest glistening from the bathwater and his muscled arms draped over the sides sent its familiar thrill of desire through Joe, followed swiftly by an _ache_ of longing so powerful he trembled with it. He wanted nothing more than to shuck his clothes and join Nicky in the bath, to make love to him until the others banged on the door to complain about the noise. He wanted to bury himself in Nicky’s arms and wake up to discover this was just some horrible nightmare.

 _“Nothing, except to check that you do not need assistance. You were badly wounded earlier,”_ Joe said lightly as he closed the door behind him.

“ _And yet, I have no wounds_ ,” Nicky said with a raised eyebrow.

 _“None that you can see,”_ Joe countered. The old archaisms of the dialect tasted strange when not used for sweet nothings. _“But you need not fear, I come in peace. I brought you clothing and will not intrude on your solitude if you wish me gone.”_

Joe placed the clothing on the vanity and stepped back. He folded his arms and leaned against the wall, in a gesture he hoped Nicky would see as unthreatening.

 _“How considerate. And here I thought you were waiting until I bathed to murder me and spare yourself the mess,”_ Nicky said, his lips quirking in a humorless smile. _“You seem on edge, Saracen, despite that woman’s insistence that you are my friend.”_

Joe laughed despite himself and said without thinking, _“Perhaps I was simply astonished to see a Frank who is not afraid of bathing.”_

 _“Ah, of course. I know we are all cross-eyed barbarians to your people. Which is why we took your city of Antioch and even now have torn down the walls of Jerusalem to free it from your grasp,”_ Nicky said pleasantly. _“You may be surprised to know that we have baths as well in Genova, great Roman baths that have kept their waters hot since centuries before your Caliphate existed.”_

_“You’re right, I would be surprised to learn that, as surprised as learning of a Frank who knew anything of the lands he invaded.”_

_“Taken back from infidels who despoiled the city of God,”_ Nicky corrected.

“ _That_ we _despoiled? In Jerusalem, your people—!_ ” Joe stopped himself, startled at his own fury, at how quickly he fell to arguing. It was centuries since they’d fought over what happened in the Holy Land, in those early days when they had bickered over who was the more just on any given day of the constant warfare between their people, or about food, about religion, about everything until they’d learned to shut the other up with kisses.

… And _this_ Nicky knew nothing of what had happened in Jerusalem when the walls came down and the Frankish knights had killed every man, woman, and child in the city without distinction until the streets ran ankle-deep in blood.

No, Nicky had not seen the slaughter before his death, because he had been outside the walls, dying and killing and dying again, until he and Joe had collapsed with exhaustion, too tired for another attempt to kill this unkillable man, each unsure why they didn’t die except that their God kept them safe.

It was decades before Nicky’s eyes were no longer haunted by the memory of the carnage his people wrought in Jerusalem.

_“If you hate my people so much why not kill me now, when I am helpless?”_

“ _I would never hurt you, Nicolò,_ ” Joe said, and wished there was something, some word he could say so that they could cut through all those years of suspicion he knew existed between their people, but all he had was the sincerity of his voice. “ _Andromache did not lie when she said you are among friends._ ”

Nicky frowned, a small, subtle gesture, but to Joe’s eyes, so attuned to his every mood and gesture for nearly a millennium, he might as well have shouted his disdain and suspicion at those words. “ _Is it true what she said, that you have found your way to the true faith, and taken Christ the Anointed One as your lord?_ ”

“ _It is,_ ” Joe said. The lie curdled on his tongue, but it was a lie he’d given ten thousand times before, in Nicky’s own Genova, in Jerusalem, in Paris, and in the burning streets of Córdoba when the Spaniards broke through the walls. He knew for a fact his face gave away nothing of the falsehood as he said it because Nicky had practiced with him until the lie was perfect, as he had done in return when they traveled lands unfriendly to Christians.

 _“Hmm."_ Nicky's fingers traced an aimless pattern in the bathwater. _“That woman… she is like none I have ever seen before. Who is she? She dresses like a man, hair uncovered and without modesty, and yet she speaks with the assurance of a queen. From her name, I would think she is Greek, perhaps from the court of Emperor Alexios in Constantinople, but she claimed no such allegiance when I asked whom she served.”_

“ _Andromache serves no one,_ ” Joe said and snorted at the thought. “ _She is an Amazon of Scythia.”_

Nicky huffed a laugh, but Joe did not join him, only held his gaze until Nicky’s amusement gave way to open confusion. Then Joe shrugged.

_“I do not lie. Fight her, if you dare, there is no greater warrior who walks the Earth.”_

_“A warrior?”_ Nicky scoffed. _“The Amazons are a pagan story, nothing more.”_

_“A story based in truth.”_

_“And why should I believe a word you say, Saracen?”_

_“Because I could easily lie to you, speaking words that I know would be easier for you to believe, like that Andromache is a servant woman and I am your Saracen captor, imprisoning you until I can ransom you back to the army of the faithful, ”_ Joe said. He searched Nicky’s face for anything, any sign of recognition, and when there was none his voice cracked as he said, _“But I believe you would know if I lied, somewhere deep down, because we have known each other in every way for years upon years. Because your life is more dear to me than my own.”_

All while he had spoken, Joe stepped closer to Nicky, until he was close enough to kneel beside the tub, hands open in a gesture of peace. Just to be this close again was intoxicating. Had it really been only this morning when they’d exchanged lazy kisses as they awoke, glorying in the warmth of holding one another skin to skin before they set out in the pre-dawn light?

Nicky studied him in return, his blue-green gaze flickering over Joe’s features. He could almost feel their passage like a feather’s brush. How they widened and his eyebrows rose and then drew together as if seeing something familiar there. “ _What was your name again, Saracen?_ ”

“Yusuf. Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani,” Joe said fervently. Was that a flicker of recognition in his love’s eyes at the sound of the name he’d first given a thousand years ago, while they were both still soaked with the blood of their first death? “ _But these past years you have called me Joe and I have called you Nicky._ ”

“ _Ni-cchi, that name again._ ” Nicky nodded half to himself but never took his eyes from Joe. “ _And... Giò?_ ” Nicky tasted the name, then made a face as if he found it bitter, and shook his head. “ _I think I prefer Yusuf. Do you really expect me to believe we have been_ friends _all these long years, Yusuf_?”

Joe leaned forward and had to stop himself from reaching out to take Nicky’s hand, instead keeping his up in front of him. If he could at least win some measure of trust, just talk to Nicky again, perhaps the ache would not be so terrible. Then, if the worst should happen and this affliction didn’t vanish on its own, he could at least begin the slow and agonizing process of rebuilding what they lost. “ _Yes,_ ya amari. _For_ _many years we have traveled together, fought side by side, and loved one another.”_

 _“Loved?”_ Nicky said with a raised eyebrow, _“Is that why you watch me bathe like a Magdalen who has spotted her night’s customer?”_

Joe chuckled under his breath. _“Am I that obvious? My apologies, I was never the discreet one.”_

Nicky’s gaze flicked down, his jaw tightening as if in thought before he looked back up again. “ _Yusuf_ …” he said and his hand lifted from the side of the tub, his fingertips hesitating an inch from Joe’s cheek, and Joe held his breath, his heart thundering as Nicky moved his hand further, teasing at his curls, wrapping his fingers around the back of his neck the way he had countless times. “ _I am sorry for this. You seem a good man, one who might have truly found salvation in Christ one day. But I do not have time to waste listening to the ravings of a madman._ ”

“ _Nicky_ , _what…?_ ” Joe pulled back in surprise, or would have, but Nicky’s fingers tightened in his hair, clenching to the point of pain.

The water in the bath exploded upward as Nicky rose, dragging Joe by the hair down and there was water all around him, in his eyes, in his lungs as he gasped in shock, bubbles touching his cheek like the brush of Nicky’s fingertips, streaming up to the surface. Weight, a full man’s weight pressing down on his neck, pushing him down into the water. His hands banged the side of the tub, pushing on instinct to free himself but another grip pinned his arms behind his back.

The porcelain floor of the bath swam before his vision, the edges narrowing as he struggled and flailed and Nicky held on, held him down and it was almost familiar, his last thought whispered, like coming home to feel those hands gripping his neck as the world shrank to nothing, and went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations:**  
>  Nicolò, dai, avanti - (Italian) Nicolò, come on, hurry up.  
> Nicolò, amor mio, ti prego, destati - (Italian, archaic) Nicolò, my love, please wake up.  
> Chi sei? - (Italian) Who are you?  
> Ya amari - (Arabic) my moon, an especially romantic endearment
> 
> **Thank you for reading! I love to hear people's thoughts while they're reading, so if you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	2. Joe

Joe’s eyes flew open and he gasped, inhaling water, his hands scrabbling as he found the edge of the tub and pushed himself out of the bathtub. His chest heaved and he hunched over, vomiting water and bile that stung his nostrils and scoured his throat. His body shook as he scrubbed his arm over his mouth, tasting acid as he fought to suck down air.

Water dripped from his hair down his back and from his beard to spatter the knee of his pant leg, the only part of his clothes that wasn’t drenched. Joe blinked the water from his eyes as he looked about the bathroom in a daze.

The clothes he’d left Nicky were gone.

Joe’s bare feet scrambled on the slick tiles as he dragged himself to his feet and dashed out the door, bracing against the wall to stay upright.

“Andy! Where’s Nicky?” Joe yelled as he stumbled into the hall, and coughed as more water rose in his throat. He cleared it again and spat before shouting, “Andy? Booker!”

“In here!” Booker’s voice came from the hallway. Joe rounded the corner and found Booker dragging on a leather jacket. Drying blood coated his shirt from the neck down, smearing from a clean slice across the throat that had already healed. Booker glanced down, following Joe’s wide-eyed stare, and zipped the jacket up to cover the blood. “Remind me to never piss off Nicky, that bastard is quiet as a cat. I didn’t hear a thing until he dropped Andy, broke her fucking neck. He got me from behind with the kitchen knife when I went to check the noise.”

“Yeah, he drowned me in the tub. Which way did he go?” Joe glanced down. “And where are my _shoes_?”

“No idea. Nicky ran out the door. Andy’s already after him.”

Joe snarled under his breath and broke into a run. The hallway tiles were cold beneath his bare feet and he burst out into the street, concrete scraping his soles. The world spun as he cast about the quiet side street lined with parked cars. Far away, the afternoon church bells tolled.

A scream split the air. A man’s voice, one he could pick out of a crowd of thousands. Joe tore after the sound, ears perked for another, but none came. He rounded the corner and found Andy pinning Nicky to the side of the building, a hand over his mouth. A butcher’s knife lay on the ground beside them and—Joe cocked his head to the side—there were his shoes on Nicky’s feet.

Huh. That must not have been comfortable. His feet were smaller than Nicky’s.

A muffled whimper puffed from beneath Andy’s hand and Nicky’s eyes were white at the edges as he stared beyond her to the car-lined streets. There was the distant whine of an airplane overhead and Nicky’s eyes tracked up to the sound, going impossibly wider at the sight, and he cringed back beneath Andy’s hand.

“Joe, grab his legs,” Andy said without looking up.

“You’re going to have to uncover his mouth to carry him,” Joe warned. He scooped the knife off the ground and tossed into one of the bushes lining the building. 

_“If you scream again, I will break your neck,”_ Andy hissed at Nicky. _“Then at least we’ll be even.”_

“S-Strega…”

Andy bared her teeth in a feral grin and snarled in Nicky’s face, _“Yes, I am a witch. A witch that will shrivel your balls from your body if you make another sound.”_

Joe ducked down to grab Nicky by the ankles and they lifted him between them. At the angle of looking down Nicky’s body from his feet, Joe caught a full view of how Nicky’s eyes rolled in terror when he caught sight of Joe. Suddenly, he was acutely aware of the bathwater still dripping in his hair, of the bile on his shirt, and already-healing cuts on his bare feet from the concrete as he and Andy carried Nicky between them like a corpse.

When they rounded the corner, Booker was there, the blood scrubbed from his neck, talking to a man standing astride a puttering _motorino_. At the sight of Andy and Joe dragging a bug-eyed Nicky between them, Booker smiled easily and waved.

 _“I see you found him!”_ Booker called in cheerful Italian before turning back to the other man. _“My friend’s husband, you see. Lately, he’s had a terrible problem with…”_ Booker tipped his hand towards his mouth in a drinking motion, _“…and so early in the day too. Very sad. I wish I could say it’s the first time.”_

The stranger nodded sagely. _“I see, sorry to hear it. Do you need any help with him?”_

 _“No, no,”_ Booker laughed. _“It’s a family problem, you understand. Don’t worry, we have help for him.”_

“ _Witches! Sir, help, they’re witches! I saw them die and return to life!_ ” Nicky shouted and Joe tightened his hands on his ankles, shooting Andy a look that she returned, hers edged with fury.

“Nicky _, I swear…”_ she snarled down under her breath but behind her, the man only gave a low whistle.

“Santo Cielo, _is he raving? Very sad indeed.”_

Booker nodded in sympathy and shrugged as if to say, what can you do? _“It was not always like this. We will get him back to bed where he can sleep it off.”_

“ _That’s good to hear. I just wanted to check in when I heard the shouting, but I see he’s in good hands._ ” The man waved and kicked his _motorino_ back into gear. The engine buzzed as he rounded the cars and continued down the street.

A shock raced through Nicky’s body, so hard Joe almost dropped him as Nicky’s head craned to watch, slack-jawed, as the _motorino_ vanished from sight.

Booker kept the fixed smile on his face until the buzz of the _motorino_ faded entirely, then dropped the expression as suddenly and completely as a mask. “Sorry to leave you with him. When I came out, that guy was here looking for whoever shouted. Come on, let’s get Nicky inside before I have to talk down another one.”

* * *

Joe kicked the door shut behind them while they jostled Nicky into the kitchen, but before he could loosen his death grip on Nicky’s legs, Andy ground out, “Do. Not. Drop. Him. Booker, get the zip ties."

“Roger that, boss,” Book said, seeming all-too relieved to duck out of the kitchen.

“Andy, is this necessary?” Joe protested. The glare she leveled at him could have slain a thousand of the witches Nicky thought they were.

“Joe, I know you love him but this is _not_ our Nicky right now.”

“He _is_ though, Andy! We can’t just…!”

“Nicky wouldn’t cut Booker’s throat!” Andy shouted back. “Nicky wouldn’t sneak up behind me and break my neck! He wouldn’t _drown you in a bathtub_. This isn’t Nicky right now, he’s a liability, and we need him _locked down_ until we figure out what to do with him! What do you think’s going to happen if he escapes again and actually _gets away_ next time, huh? I’ll tell you! He’s going to rave to anyone who will listen that he’s a lost Crusader until he gets dumped in a mental institution, and that’s if we’re lucky! What if he starts a fight somewhere, or gets hit by a bus? People are going to _see_ what he is if that happens. They’ll _know_ and we won’t be able to stop it!”

“Andy, what if he doesn’t _heal_ anymore?” Joe hissed. “We’ve never seen anything like this. What if it’s a sign it’s… it’s over for him?”

Andy recoiled, blinking, and at just that moment Booker stepped back into the room, clutching a bundle of zip ties. “Alright, I’ve got them. Hold him down,” Booker said. Andy nodded and lowered Nicky to the ground, then knelt to pin his shoulder with her knee.

He hated this, Joe realized. He hated seeing Nicky wild-eyed with terror, putting up a futile struggle as Booker grabbed his wrists in one hand and with the other drew the ties tight around them in a single practiced motion.

“Do you want to find out?” Andy said. She rose to her feet and pushed back the fringe of her hair to look down at Nicky, bound and prone on the floor.

“What?”

She stepped over Nicky to the open kitchen drawer, inside an array of knives, the butcher knife missing from the set. Andy selected a wicked little paring knife and examined the blade before turning back. “You’re always going on about how not every problem can be solved with a knife, but this one, Joe? This one can definitely be solved with a knife.”

“Andy, if you hurt him…”

“Shhh,” Andy crooned and knelt down beside Nicky, grabbing him by his bound wrists and yanking them towards her. Nicky stared up at her in abject terror. “ _This man broke my neck. I think I have earned this much._ ”

“Euh, boss, I’m not sure that’s a good idea...” Booker began.

Joe winced as Andy slashed the paring knife across Nicky’s forearm and his skin split open like an overstuffed sack. Blood beaded across the thin slice then surged from the wound. Nicky struggled, recoiling with a shout, spitting Ligurian curses at Andy, until…

Nicky’s went wide and Joe knew that look, that first few seconds of shock when the pain faded and the wound closed. In seconds, all that was left to show it was ever there was the drying blood that stained Nicky’s unscarred forearm and the dark red stains spattering the kitchen tiles.

Joe was almost surprised it hadn’t happened sooner when Nicky took one look at the healed wound, went white as a corpse, and his eyes rolled back into his head, passed out. Honestly, between airplanes, motorcycles, and watching dead people come back to life, it was probably just a matter of time.

Andy rose and went to the sink, cleaning and toweling the knife dry, never one to mistreat a blade, while the two men stared at one another in grim apprehension. Catching their look, she frowned and said, “Well?”

“Well,” Booker said, looking down at Nicky’s unconscious form. “The good news, I guess, is that we know Nicky still can’t die.” He sucked at his teeth. “The _bad_ news is that we have a murderous Crusader as our prisoner and now he _also_ knows he can’t die. Keeping Nicky locked down just got... complicated.”

Joe let out a slow breath and scrubbed a hand down his face, amazed at how tight his chest had been without realizing at the thought that Nicky no longer healed. “And we have even less idea of why this is happening.”

Andy looked between Booker and Joe, then back to Nicky on the floor. “Shit.”

* * *

They wrestled Nicky’s unconscious body into the master bedroom he and Joe had picked out as their own when they arrived. The room had its own small washroom with a toilet and shower, and since all of the apartment's windows were barred anyway, in addition to the wooden planks covering them from within, there was little chance he'd be able to break out.

He and Nicky had made _plans_ for the bedroom that morning before the mission, plans that took into account that the room was on the far side of the apartment from where Booker and Andy were sleeping. Now, Nicky might wake up disoriented by the paisley bedspread and in a state of superstitious terror at the electric lamp beside him, but if he was going to make another escape attempt, there was nowhere to go but through the door to the living room, where they all collapsed in heartsick exhaustion after changing out of their blood and bile-stained clothes.

“I found a doctor, by the way, just before Nicky cut me open. I came out to tell you, Andy, but you were, well.…” Booker nodded towards the barricaded bedroom door and continued. “The doc’s mafia connected but has a reputation for keeping her mouth shut with enough money under the table. Says she’ll even bring X-ray equipment, but if that’s not enough to figure out what’s wrong, we’ll need to take him to a hospital.”

“No hospitals,” Andy muttered.

“Andy…”

“We can’t risk it!”

“I’ll take him,” Joe said. Andy and Booker stopped mid-word and turned to look at him.

Joe sat on the rose-colored chaise longue, his hands clasped before him. Nicky’s blood stained the velvet beside his knee. “You two can go back to Goussainville, cover your tracks. Once you’re settled, I’ll take him in.”

Andy rounded on him. “Joe, it’s too dangerous. You won’t be able to keep him locked down on your own. What if something happens? What if he runs off again?”

“What choice do I have, Andy?” his voice cracked as he looked up. “It’s _Nicky_.”

She held his gaze for a moment, lips parted for a retort, then her shoulders slumped and she hung her head. “Fuck, I knew you’d say that.”

“Look, all of this could be beside the point,” Booker interrupted. “Maybe the doc will figure it out and we’ll be out of here by tomorrow night.”

“Figure it out?” Andy said dryly.

“Yeah, figure out this… weird _thing_ happening to an immortal that none of us have seen before in a thousand years, apparently,” Booker said. “Either way, I shouldn’t have to remind you all that we can’t stay after she’s done with Nicky. The traffickers we took out were connected and the dark web is buzzing. There’s already a reward out for us.”

“We have time,” Joe countered, “and this safe house is well hidden. We can give Nicky a few days to recover before moving out.”

“And if he takes too long, we tie him up and throw him in the trunk.” Andy shrugged.

“We are _not_ going to do that,” Joe glared.

“He just _drowned_ you!”

“And it doesn’t fucking matter because I’m fine! And he’s fine! We’re all fine for-fucking-ever and there’s no harm done except a couple of ruined shirts. But Nicky doesn’t _know who I am_ and so far healing isn’t enough to bring his memory back! And if we can’t _fix_ this some other way, there’s a chance he might _never_ remember!” Joe snarled. “And then what do I do, Andy, huh? If he _never_ remembers, then he just woke up, terrified and alone, a thousand years after everything he has _ever_ known has crumbled to _dust_ , except for me, the man who _killed him._ And, if you get your way, then I _still_ have to start all over again, but this time as the man who locked him up in the trunk of a car!”

“And the first time you met, you murdered each other three times before you learned the other’s names!” Andy shouted. “Damn it, Joe, I trust you two will figure it out! You’ve known him for a thousand years and you seriously can’t think of _anything_ you could say that would win him back faster in the next thousand?”

“Maybe someday! But right now, nothing is getting through to him because he thinks I’m a fucking _infidel_ he has to kill before he can escape back to the damn _army of the faithful!_ ”

Booker was frowned thoughtfully and held up a hand before Andy could retort. “Wait a second, Andy has a point. Nicky still heals, right? As far as we can tell, there’s no reason he won’t continue to live for centuries more.”

“ _Inshallah._ ” Joe nodded in cautious agreement.

Booker blew out a breath and said, “Well, in that case, Nicky just learned he’s immortal. For the first time, as far as he knows. I mean, the _first_ first time, you said neither of you knew what was going on, but at least you had each other until Andy and… until Andy caught up to you.

“But this time he’s got _you_. You could, I don’t know, mentor him. Hell, as long as this lasts, Nicky’s the new baby of the family. Poor bastard has no idea what’s going on. You don’t have to just be the guy who locks him in a trunk, you could be the guy who gives him the _nicest_ introduction possible to this new fucked up world he’s in. At least, a nicer one than any of us got.”

“Huh.” Joe blinked and glanced at the door to where Nicky was—well, there was no better word for it—imprisoned. He wasn’t imagining things, there was definitely the sound of movement coming from within.

He tried to imagine what Booker was saying, to imagine Nicky as a young man again, as confused and alone as Booker had been when they found him.

It was almost impossible. _Nicky_ , Nicolò di Genova, freshly immortal as far as he knew, despite being alive almost a thousand years, as wide-eyed and scared as a newborn lamb? Sure, they had both been alone the first time, and terrified, but even as enemies they’d had each other to make sense of the senseless. They had _seen_ that they were not the only ones. What would Joe do, if he could go back to that young man outside Jerusalem and tell Nicky his future? What would he _say_ to soothe those fears? “Yeah, I... guess I could do that.”

“And maybe try not to get murdered this time.”

Joe glared at Booker, “Same to you.”

* * *

Joe took a deep breath as he stood before the door to the bedroom. Behind him, Andy stood with her arms folded and Booker slouched, both of them with their eyes trained on the door as if expecting a bear to burst through it. Which might not be far from the truth. There were no new sounds coming from the room and so it was entirely possible that Nicky waited on the other side of the door with a broken off bedpost, ready to brain the next person who came through, Joe thought glumly. He sighed and turned the key in the lock to go inside.

Except when he opened the door, Nicky _was_ in front of him, just not with an improvised weapon and a berserk look in his eye. He was kneeling beside the bed. Praying.

It was a familiar sight and yet… off, somehow. Joe started, realizing he hadn’t closed the door behind him and hastened to do so, only to be transfixed once more the moment he turned back. First, because it was Nicky. Even a few moments apart felt like hours, like an eternity when the person who looked back was a stranger. The second was the prayer itself and why it looked so unfamiliar. He had seen Nicky pray before, tens of thousands of times.

But never like this. Never with his bound hands clenched together, white-knuckled, his forehead lined with anguish, tension shaking through his body as if he were a clockwork toy wound so tight it might fly apart. Hissed Latin spilled from his lips so swiftly the words blurred one into the next. Fanaticism hung like a stench in the air as if it rose like smoke from around Nicky’s bent shoulders.

Joe had never met Nicolò the Crusader, the religious fanatic, the holy warrior so certain of his cause, but Nicky had told him stories of that man. Joe might have killed him three times before they parted ways, but that Nicolò died the morning _after_ their duel when he first set eyes upon the charnel house his people had made of Jerusalem.

Joe had met that man only to kill him and be killed. He had never seen him pray. The next time they saw one another, the doubt was already there in Nicky, the kindness taking stubborn root in the stony ground of hatred his Church had laid in the hearts of those who fought their holy war. The first time Joe saw Nicky pray it was softly, quietly, entreating God for understanding, but most of all for forgiveness.

The man before him prayed as if demanding God appear before him. And when those prayers ceased, when he looked up at the sound of an intruder on his solitude, with blue-green eyes like chips of ice, Joe felt that glare like a sucker-punch, driving the breath from his body with the weight of its hatred.

“ _You are not a Christian,_ ” Nicky said, his voice low and flat, without inflection or curiosity. It was not a question.

Joe released a slow breath and shook his head. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he should have spun more clever lies to set this man at ease. But from the beginning, there’d never been lies between them, even when they killed each other again and again. And he didn’t have the strength to lie now. “ _No, I am not.”_

Nicky nodded to himself and rose from where he knelt in a single, controlled motion. All four of them were warriors when they came to this life, and they’d all become so much more since. But now, Nicky did not move like what he’d become, like a sniper, or a dancer, or an acrobat as they’d been for an enjoyable decade in the 17th century. No, he moved like a knight, and nothing more, his shoulders set as if bearing the weight of heavy chainmail. Not that it made him any less dangerous, Joe reminded himself.

“ _That is not the only lie you told,_ ” Nicky said. He took a step forward, feet planted wide and stable. Joe’s eyes flickered down as Nicky’s fingers clenching and unclenching where they were bound before him as if looking for the sword hilt that wasn’t there to grasp.

_“It was the only one made with intent and it was first made on my behalf. I did not wish to lie to you, Nicolò.”_

_“And yet, you do so with every false breath you take,”_ Nicky said. Another step closer. _“You said we have known each other for many years and perhaps we have… because we are not alive, are we?”_

“ _I did not…_ what?” Joe said, English slipping out as he stared, baffled.

_“All around me speak a strange tongue. Creatures the size of ships roar across the sky. There is a city greater than any I have seen in the world just outside these doors, and within this house, there are demons who cannot be injured or die? There is no other explanation, except that we are already dead and I have been denied the forgiveness I was promised.”_

Well. It was a theory, one Joe had heard before. They’d all bandied about the possibility on drunken evenings turned philosophical. Lately, it was mostly Booker entertaining the notion that they were already dead— with an edge of longing in his voice—before Andy huffed a sigh and muttered something about superstition, usually in a language long forgotten to spare Booker’s feelings.

“ _You’re not dead, Nicolò. You cannot die, none of us can. It has been a thousand years since Jerusalem fell,”_ he pleaded. _Allah_ , it seemed futile, simply quoting the past back at Nicky when there was no flicker of recognition in his eyes. He wondered wildly for a moment if perhaps this was something supernatural at play or even time travel. If his own Nicky was even now outside the gates of Jerusalem and this one had been brought to the present. 

_“A thousand years?”_ Nicky scoffed. _“In Hell, perhaps. I recognize your face now, Saracen. You are the one who stood atop Jerusalem’s walls. I remember killing you before I woke up here. It is the last thing I remember and so you lie when you say we are alive. We are in Hell together, and those other two are witches or devils sent to torment me."_

“For fuck’s sake, Nicky!” Joe snarled then stopped himself and dragged a hand down his face to recover his composure. “ _We are not your captors. We are not tormenting you. Even if you do not trust us you must see we did not take any steps to harm you until you attacked us first. Andromache drew you a bath, I brought you clothing, and soon we will feed you.”_ Shit, the lasagna was still in the oven, actually. He should remind Booker not to let it burn. _“Everything we have done has been to protect you. You are_ ill _, Nicolò. The world outside is a dangerous place for you right now!”_

_“That woman took a knife to me!”_

_“And yet, you have no wounds,”_ Joe said mockingly.

 _“If I am not your prisoner, then release my bonds,”_ Nicky said, holding up his zip-tied wrists. _“You say you are not my enemy and yet I find that harder to believe than that you are not a madman. Release my bonds and we can at least speak together as men.”_

Joe took in Nicky’s proffered wrists, growled a sigh, and gestured from him to come closer. The taller man did so, back straight, holding his wrists out. Joe stuck his tongue between his teeth as he slipped his fingers up under the zip-tie plastic. Beyond his bound wrists were Nicky’s long legs, his bare toes curling against the floor… shifting to brace on the back foot, though his shoulders remained relaxed.

The plastic snapped between Joe’s fingers just as his conscious mind put together what he was seeing: a Frankish knight preparing to grapple.

Son of a _bitch_.

“ _Many thanks,_ ” Nicky said dryly and locked his hands around Joe’s throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author Note:** Some of you may notice Joe’s feet are described as smaller than Nicky’s and Nicky as taller than him. Factually for the film, Marwan Kenzari (Joe) is about an inch taller than Luca Marinelli (Nicky) but in the comic Nicky is about a foot taller than Joe and I find that height difference incredibly charming given Joe is shown as the big spoon. So in this fic, I give a nod to the comic heights by having Nicky be slightly taller than Joe, though not so dramatically as in the comics. It’s just a personal choice and not canonical to the film in case this pinged anyone as off :)
> 
>  **Translations:**  
>  Strega - (Italian) Witch  
> Santo Cielo - (Italian) My God  
> Motorino - (Italian) a moped  
> Inshallah - (Arabic) "God willing" or "hopefully"
> 
>   
> **Thank you for reading! I love to hear people's thoughts while they're reading, so if you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	3. Joe

Joe winced and cricked his neck to the side, feeling the bones pop back into place. There was an unfamiliar ceiling above him and he frowned up at its elegant, white plaster molding then shifted to brush his fingertips over a bare wooden floor. Huh. He was on the ground. That didn’t seem right.

Then he heard it: the sound of muffled swearing from the next room.

“Get his arm, Booker! No, the _other_ arm! Fuck!”

“Tu veux que je te brise le cou, Nicky _?_ Parce que je te briserai le cou!” Booker snarled.

There was a thump and Joe hissed between his teeth as the last vertebrae of his own broken neck popped back into place before rolling to his feet.

The door to the bedroom was wide open and the couch in the parlor was overturned. In the middle of the room, Nicky lay face-first on the floor. Andy was sitting on his back, her arms wrapped around his throat in a chokehold, with Booker pinning his legs and one arm. Nicky’s fingers scrabbled at the floor, his free arm flailing behind him to try to strike back at them.

“I thought I told you not to get murdered,” Booker gritted out, his face red from the exertion of keeping Nicky’s struggling body locked down beneath him.

Andy’s head shot up and she glared at where Joe stood in the doorway. “You fucking _untied_ him?”

“It was meant as a truce!” Joe snapped but his eyes stayed fixed on Nicky struggling on the floor.

“Next time make sure he’s agreed to the truce!”

“Let him up.”

“No fucking way, we just got him down!” Booker protested and Andy grunted in agreement.

“I said, let him up.” Joe stepped into the parlor until he loomed above the three twisting on the ground. “You two can guard the door, but this is between him and me.”

“Not if you’re just going to get suckered again,” Andy gritted out. Her arm clenched around Nicky’s throat dragging a harsh, choking gasp out of him as he fought for air.

“No more getting suckered,” Joe agreed. His fingers cracked as he clenched them at his side and said in Ligurian, “ _We have treated him as a man and yet he insists on behaving like a beast._ ” Nicky twisted back to glare at him, his cheeks puffed with strain and the corner of his lips turning blue from Andy’s chokehold. Yet the lack of air seemed to do nothing to dim the loathing in his eyes. “ _Fine. If he will hear no other language than violence, then I will speak to him in the only manner he understands._ ”

“Oh, shit,” Booker said. “I think I got that bit.”

“Yeah?” Andy said over her shoulder. “You say you’ve got this round, Joe? Go ahead. But if he comes within two feet of that door, I’m shooting him.”

“Do what you need to,” Joe said grimly.

Andy nodded and her teeth flashed in a grimace as she gave Nicky’s throat one last squeeze before she leapt off of him. Booker scrambled up behind her, moving backwards to match her as both took up positions flanking the arched doorway to the kitchen, with its exit to the apartment beyond.

Nicky coughed and curled in on himself on the floor, his hand clutching at his throat as he sucked down air, and the tiny, broken blood vessels in his eyes healed from the suffocation. He did not waste time though, rising at once to a crouch, feet set perpendicular to one another in a wide swordsman’s stance, hands before him, Joe noted with approval. This Nicky might not have the centuries of experience he would one day gain, but even that day in Jerusalem he was no novice to war. Not after three years on the road to Jerusalem, killing and fighting as they went, sacking cities along the way, and building his thirst for the blood of God’s enemies to a fever pitch.

Well, if Nicky needed to expel that thirst from his system, Joe was happy to give his lover anything he desired including, if necessary, an ass-kicking.

“ _So ready to die again, Saracen?”_ Nicky grinned, all teeth.

“ _You’re not going to kill me, Nicolò,_ ” Joe said. His eyes flicked around the room, taking in the couch, the boxy television in the corner, the fireplace, the doorways, the armoire. The struggle had cleared an open area in the middle of the floor, which meant he had all the space he needed. His eyes flicked back to Nicky but he did not match his crouch. He kept his feet apart and his hands by his sides, no stance, at least no stance Nicky at this time would recognize for what it was.

_“I have done so twice, I can do so again. I will kill you a hundred times or a thousand if it is what I must do to be free of your coven.”_

“ _You misunderstand,”_ Joe said. Nicky took a step to the side, circling, looking for a weak spot to strike when to his eyes Joe had given him so many. Joe remained still, waiting. “ _You will not be able to kill me again, because I am no longer making the error of trusting you as if you were the man I love._ ”

“ _God Almighty will grant me all the strength I need to vanquish you,”_ Nicky spat.

Joe raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “ _I wonder then if you fail, does that mean my God was stronger?_ ”

“ _It will only mean my faith was not strong enough.”_

Right, Crusader, Joe thought and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “ _Prove it.”_

“ _What is there to prove? I have killed you twice already unarmed, but if you truly wish for a match, you should return to me my sword._ ”

“ _Fine. You want a sword?_ ” Joe deadpanned then called towards the kitchen. “Booker, Andy, would one of you be so kind as to get Nicolò his sword from the kit bag?”

“Seriously, _now_ you change your mind about giving him his sword back?” Booker stared. “Joe, I swear to God, if he trashes the safe house, you’re the one who has to clean it up. It’s not like we can get a repairman in here with a longsword sticking out of the wall!”

“It won’t come to that,” Joe said. Nicky circled but was apparently content, or _perhaps_ too honorable, to strike while Joe was bowing to his demand. Booker puffed out a sigh and gave Joe a sidelong look before glancing to Andy for confirmation. She nodded. Her gaze was sharp and fixed on Nicky, seeming not perturbed in the slightest at the prospect of needing to take him down if it came to that, and perhaps relishing the prospect, if Joe was any expert on that feral glint she sometimes got in her eye at the prospect of a good fight without innocents on the line.

Nicky’s preferred sword these days was nothing like the blade he had borne during the Siege of Jerusalem. It was impractical to carry a shield on stealth missions, and so the clunky, one-handed sword that had been a knight’s favored weapon nine hundred years ago was exchanged for the long dueling blade that Nicky fell in love with during the Renaissance.

Nicky’s eyes widened at the sight as Booker emerged from the far bedroom, where they’d been storing their weapons. He was holding the black leather scabbard with the battle-ready sword that had so delighted Nicky when he found it in a reenactor’s catalogue and discovered that the weight—in this rare instance compared to most silly modern replicas—was well-suited to combat.

Booker tossed the blade to Nicky—still in its scabbard—clearly uninterested in getting closer. Nicky snatched it out of the air and pulled the blade out with the hiss of metal on leather. His stance was off balance, the steel was light compared to the clumsy iron swords he was used to, but the extra length made it unwieldy for one hand. He favored his right side, unaccustomed to the lack of shield on his left. His eyes narrowed as he squared off against Joe.

“ _Where is your blade, Saracen?_ ”

“ _I don’t need one to fight you, Nicolò. This will be over quickly enough as it is_.” Joe nodded to the sword in Nicky’s hand. “ _I know this isn't the one you’re used to, not yet anyway, so you may have the first move._ ”

Fury and disbelief tightened Nicky’s jaw but he did not protest, just crooked his left arm unconsciously to brace himself for a shield that wasn’t there and swung wide at Joe.

Joe darted forward inside Nicky’s guard and caught Nicky by the bicep before he finished his wild swing. Mostly to be a bastard, but also, “ _Ah, ah. Be careful of the walls,_ ” he nodded towards them then released Nicky’s arm and stepped back out of range.

Nicky sputtered in outrage, his gaze flicking wildly between the walls and Joe. Then his left hand closed around the hilt as he brought the blade back like a club, twisting his hips into the blow. Joe heard the whistle as the blade passed where he had stood a second before.

Nicky threw himself into a flurry of blows, slashing and stabbing wildly so that Joe needed to be more careful of where he dodged to keep Nicky in the cleared center of the parlor. From the fury in Nicky’s eyes, he doubted he noticed that he was being led like a bull with a ring through his nose, only seeming intent on breaching the space between them, the tantalizing inch of distance that Joe allowed, which was the difference between another wild miss and cutting him open from shoulder to hip.

When Nicky got too close to the kitchen doorway, Joe feinted hard, vanishing into the blindspot Nicky created with his own arm when he raised the blade for a diagonal slice. Joe maneuvered over to Nicky’s side to deliver a swift kick to the back of his knees that Nicky only barely stopped from turning into a tumble to the ground.

To his credit, Nicky righted himself quickly, spinning around and bringing the blade up in front of him, eying Joe warily, circling him, going for a thrust that Joe stepped away from, and then an overhead strike that came within an inch of crashing into the parlor’s chandelier.

Shit. All right, that was too close. He only meant to prove a point, and Booker and Andy would send him back with a bucket of plaster if Nicky left even a scratch.

Nicky’s mouth had tightened to a line of concentration, his nostrils flaring as he came in for another stab with the long blade but, at the last second, drove his hands down and the tip of the blade up towards Joe’s face. A surprising move or it would have been, but the next would always be a spinning strike, Joe knew from the long hours they’d spent together, breaking Nicky of this habit with Master Fabris four-hundred years ago. And after two steps back and one to the side, Joe dove in and spun with him, moving with him like a dancing partner, so close they were chest to chest. His left hand reached up as they moved and clamped down around Nicky’s right, wrapped around the hilt.

“ _Enough,_ ” Joe said quietly and broke Nicky’s grip around the blade, and put his right palm on Nicky’s chest, shoving him backwards so he yelped and stumbled, tripping over the chaise longue.

Joe leaned down and swept the scabbard off the floor to slide the blade back home, then tossed it to Booker with a grin. “See? I promised we wouldn’t trash the place.”

“Fight’s not over yet, Joe.” Booker nodded towards Nicky as he scrambled to his feet on the other side of the chaise longue. His teeth were bared in a snarl as he threw himself at Joe bare-handed, grabbing for his shirt and missing by an inch.

“ _The Devil take you! That was his work there, demon!_ ”

Joe recoiled, dodging out of the line of Nicky’s charge before rounding on him to snap, “ _Neither the Devil nor God are the reason you are losing this fight, Nicolò! You are losing because I have known you for a thousand years and know everything there is to know about you. You will lose because I love you and between us there are no secrets and no lies.”_

“ _You know nothing about me, Saracen dog,_ ” Nicky snarled and threw a punch.

Joe sidestepped. “ _Really? I know your mother’s name was Maria and your father’s was Antonio, just like your eldest brother. I know that when he and your second brother, Piero, died of fever that your father demanded your return from the Church, where you had been studying to become a priest._ ”

Nicky went white. Then he shook his head in denial, his mouth firming to a line as his gaze hardened. He struck out again and Joe stepped back and to the side, feeling the breeze as Nicky’s arm passed him, as he overbalanced and recovered. “ _That means nothing. Perhaps you questioned one of my brothers in arms. Any of them might be tricked into giving that information to a spy!_ ”

“ _Would they know how you wept when you learned of the summons?_ ” Joe said. Nicky froze. “ _Would they know how you begged the Bishop, on your knees, not to force you to return?_ ”

“… _They could easily guess. Many know that I wish to dedicate my life to God,_ ” Nicky rasped. His hands moved as if to punch, an easy feint for Joe to read, before his leg swept out, seeking to hook Joe behind the knee. Joe stepped out of the way of the kick with barely a glance downward as he danced back.

“ _But do they know what your father did, to take you from the Church?_ ” Joe pressed. “ _Do they know of the gold he paid to buy you back, the gold your Bishop accepted?_ ”

Nicky’s face, already pale, went green. “ _You don’t know what you’re talking about._ ”

“ _Because you haven’t told anyone, have you?_ ” Joe said. “ _Nico, I know you have not. I know because I was the first one you told, when you broke the oath of secrecy you swore to the Bishop. The oath you swore before Christ, and the Virgin Mary, and before God._ ”

“ _I would never break that oath to the likes of you!_ ” Nicky snapped but his voice cracked, went shrill over the _never_ , the _mai_ , and Joe had to pause in speaking for a moment as his agitation seemed to drive Nicky forward to try for a grab, to pull Joe into a grapple which was the favorite unarmed style of every Frankish knight, and when that failed too, he snarled and let loose a swinging backhand at Joe’s face.

Each strike Joe dodged—he could admit to himself—with a hint of bravado, moving to the exact limit of Nicky’s range. They had been one another’s sparring partners more times than any other pair on Earth, except perhaps Quynh and Andromache. He knew the exact dimensions of Nicky’s reach, down to the hairsbreadth. Calm, riled, drunk, or drugged, he knew where Nicky would begin and end. He could have fought him blind.

 _“When you returned home, you told your dying mother that you were not yet ordained, that you had taken no vows, but that was a lie, wasn’t it?”_ Joe continued. _“A new cloister for your brothers in Christ, in exchange for defrocking one priest? It was a bargain for the Bishop. And then he swore you to secrecy, though you wept and begged to be spared and be permitted to fulfill your vow to serve God.”_

_“That isn’t true!”_

_“Now who is the liar? You were to have your own congregation that very month. You had already planned your first sermon. It was all you could think of from the moment you were ordained. You even forgot to send word to your own family. You never got the chance to tell them before that life was stolen away.”_

_“Shut up!”_ Nicky screamed, wild-eyed, and Joe felt that pain in his own soul, seeing for the first time not just the memory in Nicky’s eyes but the truth of the wounded boy he had been so long ago.

_“The sermon was to be a meditation on Christ’s infinite kindness, calling on your flock to remember to love their neighbor, to give charity freely to the poorest among them, to always help those in need…”_

“ _Enough!”_ Nicky cried and swung his fist at Joe’s face, his movements already adjusted as he fell into the trap Joe had set with his tempo. Nicky’s arm halted at the last moment to anticipate another dodge, to prevent himself from overextending when he missed.

Joe struck. Snatched Nicky’s wrist just as it slowed, twisted, and Nicky yelped in pain like a shocked puppy as Joe raised Nicky’s locked wrist and bent his elbow back, paralyzing him. He put his face close to Nicky’s, searching those beautiful eyes like ice for something, anything besides the rage and pain twisting his feature. “ _What happened to you, Nicolò?_ _The Bishop called you the gentlest of his students, yet you traveled to Jerusalem with a sword in hand, prepared to murder children in the name of Christ._ ”

“ _I—I never killed innocents,_ ” Nicky winced, going up on his tiptoes as Joe added the lightest of pressure to his twisted arm. “ _Never._ ”

“ _And yet while you fought outside the walls of Jerusalem, the army of the faithful killed every man, woman, and child inside,_ ” Joe hissed. “ _Your army did this because they saw the people of Jerusalem as infidels, as no better than animals to be slaughtered. Is that what Christ would have wanted?_ ”

“ _You’re lying!_ ” Nicky snapped but his eyes were wide, staring in horror at Joe.

“ _You know I’m not,_ ” Joe said softly. “ _You knew before the first horns sounded that day what would happen. You saw the thirst for blood in the eyes of your fellow soldiers. You just didn’t want to believe and so you did nothing to stop it. You have spent the rest of your life atoning for that day. Decades, centuries, of helping others, all to make up for the one time you looked away. Even when it was hopeless, even when I, or Andromache, or Booker, or Quynh told you it was impossible, that no one could be saved, you would go back. You would suffer and you would die, again and again, just to save one life. Just one. And that’s why I love you._ ”

There were tears streaking Nicky’s cheeks. His eyes were shut, his neck strained as his body contorted to resist the pain of the wrist lock. A droplet fell from his chin, staining his linen shirt.

Joe’s heart twisted at the sight. He didn’t know how it hadn’t broken a thousand times that day, as it cracked and splintered in his chest. His shoulders fell as grief swept him and he released the wrist lock.

Nicky collapsed to the floor, sucking down sobbing breaths as he clutched his wrist to his chest. Joe watched him, not daring to drop his guard but almost too heart-sick to care.

 _“… I went to find forgiveness,”_ Nicky whispered, his voice cracked and uneven, _“for abandoning God’s call to serve Him. The Pope said we would be forgiven all sins, even… even that one. But to be forgiven, God called on us to take up arms, to save the Holy City.”_ He looked up at Joe, eyes red-rimmed, his blue-green eyes all the more shocking for the contrast. _“I only ever wanted to serve Him.”_

 _“And you have.”_ Joe carefully lowered himself to the ground to kneel beside Nicky. _“For centuries, in more ways than you know and more times than any could count, you have, Nicolò. You are not in Hell. You are not my enemy. I love you and I am trying to help you now.”_

 _“How do I know you are not a demon sent to tempt me?”_ Nicky croaked. _“Appearing with a beautiful face, offering the forgiveness I have so long desired, and a vision that I will become better than I am. You even speak of eternal life outside God’s kingdom, just as the Devil would. How can this be anything else but an attempt to draw me away from the path God has set before me?”_

 _“I think the Devil would have made this easier on you if he sought to tempt you,”_ Joe said with a half-hearted smile. _“Do you truly think he would lead you_ away _from war?”_

_“A holy war.”_

_“A war, Nico. A war that ended long ago.”_

Nicky bit his lip and at first, Joe thought it was in contemplation until he saw Nicky’s lower lip tremble, holding back tears. How he took a long, slow breath, before whispering, _“Perhaps I have been wrong and you are not the Devil. Perhaps... on the road to Canaan, Jacob was defeated, wrestling what he thought was a man.”_

 _“No, Nicolò,"_ Joe chuckled at the thought as he shook his head, " _I am not an angel either."_

Nicky swallowed. _“And yet you say you have lived a thousand years. If that is true, perhaps you are an angel and do not know it.”_

Joe hesitated. He and Nicky had discussed this possibility too, but both had laughed at the notion. Yet, somehow, it sounded different coming from this Nicky, barely thirty years old in his own mind and staring up at Joe with reddened eyes and a tear-streaked face, wanting so desperately to _believe_.

 _“If I am, then so are you.”_ Joe held out his hand to Nicky. _“Peace? We killed each other three times when first we met. Before we knew each other’s names, as Andromache so loves to remind me. I would prefer to skip the full refrain if we must sing this song again.”_

Nicky looked at his hand. _“I do not remember, S—Yusuf. I’m not sure I should believe you, or believe that we are not dead, but I might… accept, for now, that you do not wish me harm, though I am still your prisoner.”_

“ _Only to keep you safe. To keep all of us safe,_ ” Joe said. But even as he spoke he realized how inadequate were his reassurances. Pretty words with no substance or proof behind them. _“We are your family, Nicolò, not your jailers, and I will prove it to you. How about tomorrow before the physician comes, we go for a walk outside? The city gardens are not far from here._ ”

“Abso-fucking-lutely _not_ , Joe!” Andy yelled from the kitchen doorway.

Joe ignored her. _“If you can be trusted to dine with us tonight, to sleep among us without harming us, and if you will simply have patience, Nicolò, then this does not have to be a prison. We will do our best to heal your mind and you will see this is not Hell. It is a strange world beyond these walls but one I know you can find happiness in. I have seen it. Will you do this for me, Nicolò? Will you give me a few days of your trust so that all of us need not suffer?”_

Nicky stared at Joe’s hand, then slowly took it and his grip tightened around Joe’s. _“Three days, Yusuf, but three days only. As long as Christ our Lord spent in Hell. That I can give you.”_

Joe raised an eyebrow. “ _And what will come after that?_ ”

_“After that, I will know if I can trust you at your word, that I am no prisoner and you are no demon. The army of the faithful can spare me for three days if you lie and they are still out there. And, I think, God can forgive me three days living with a pagan, so long as I do penance after. But just as you ask me to prove myself, I ask the same of you. Is that not a fair trade?”_

Joe cocked his head to the side. _“You have changed your outlook rather quickly, my bloodthirsty Frank. How do_ I _know that I can trust you to hold up this ‘fair trade’ you offer, and not try to kill us again, or flee?”_

 _“Besides the fact you just tossed me around like a fully-trained knight wrestling a toddler?”_ Nicky scoffed, a glimmer of humor in his eye. _“Or that you claim to be my lover and know secrets that I’ve never confessed to my own priest? Either you lie and I am already dead or you speak the truth and I too cannot die. Whichever it is, I will find a way to escape if you are false. Of that, you can be sure.”_

Joe’s answering smile fell and his stomach clenched, seeing in Nicky’s self-assurance the young immortals they’d once been, before Quynh, before they’d learned how their immortality could become a fate worse than death. It did not occur to Nicky that if they truly wished to imprison him, they could lock him in a chest and leave him there for a hundred years. Perhaps it was for the best, for now, that he did not make that connection.

Joe drew Nicky to his feet, resisting the urge to shake on their bargain, a custom that would not emerge until centuries later for this Nicky, and would only confuse him. That was when he heard it.

Nicky’s stomach growling.

“Booker, how much time is left on the oven?” Joe called over his shoulder.

“Euh… ‘bout five more minutes?” Booker called back. “There’s no way in hell we’re eating with the murderous Crusader, right?”

“I’m afraid we are.”

“… Alright, fine, but nobody is getting knives tonight. That’s where I put my foot down.”

“Thank you, Booker,” Joe chimed back and realized with a start that Nicky’s hand was still in his. It had felt so natural to hold again he’d forgotten to release it. But Nicky hadn’t pulled his back either or stopped looking at Joe, watching him with his lips slightly parted and eyes narrowed as if finding something unexpected, something fascinating. _Allah_ , Joe wanted to kiss him…

“Fifty years to win him back, hmm?” Andy said dryly from behind Joe. “You know, the lasagna was only set to bake for fifty minutes.”

“Do not jinx this for me, Andy,” Joe warned. Nicky’s blue-green eyes were still watching his, his brow crinkled a little in confusion, trying to parse the unfamiliar language.

“All I’m saying is, the lasagna took longer. And if that isn’t the most Italian thing I’ve ever heard…”

“ _What are they saying?_ ” Nicky said with a raised eyebrow over Joe’s shoulder.

_“Nothing important. They are only… commenting on your Italian origin.”_

Nicky frowned. _“But I am not Italian? I am Genovese.”_

Joe sighed. _“Right, about that…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I admit, "Nobody Know" by CHAII, the song from when Andy and Nile fought in "The Old Guard" film was playing in my head during the fight scene between Nicky and Joe. Just my little send up to a similar moment of an experienced immortal completely owning the baby one ;)
> 
>  **Translation:**  
>  Tu veux que je te brise le cou, Nicky? Parce que je te briserai le cou! - Do you want me to break your neck, Nicky? Because I will break your neck!
> 
> **Thank you for reading! I love to hear people's thoughts while they're reading, so if you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	4. Joe

“Oh my God,” Booker murmured as they sat around the polished dining room table and he watched, aghast as Nicky poked at the lasagna square on his plate with what appeared to be horror. “Nicky doesn’t know about _tomatoes_.”

“Or forks,” Andy added around her own mouthful of lasagna. Booker’s demand had been granted and there were, in fact, no knives on the table.

Much to Nicky’s obvious confusion. _“How am I supposed to eat…whatever this is?”_

Booker snorted and covered his mouth with a napkin as he ducked his head away from the others in a vain attempt to hide his laughter.

“ _You pierce it, like a pitchfork and hay,_ ” Joe demonstrated, cutting off a portion of his lasagna with the edge of his fork before spearing it and raising it to his lips. “ _Like this.”_

Nicky looked down at his plate. _“Could I not simply have an eating knife, please?”_

“ _No knives,_ ” Andy and Booker interrupted in unison.

Nicky flinched, then morosely turned back to picking over his lasagna. _“Explain it to me again, what is this red paste? Is it a vegetable or a fruit?”_

“ _Funny story…_ ” Booker began and cut himself off with another surreptitious snicker at Joe’s look. “ _But I will let Yusuf explain_.”

 _“It is a fruit often used in sauce,”_ Joe continued. _“It comes from far away, farther than you’ve ever heard of, and has become very popular in Rome.”_

Nicky wrinkled his nose, looking skeptically down at his plate. “ _The Romans never did have any taste._ ”

“I’m glad you’re finding humor in this situation, Booker,” Joe remarked pleasantly, fixing Booker with a glare across the table. The Frenchman looked as if he was about to die from suffocation behind the napkin pressed over his face, which had gone bright red. His shoulders shook. “And I see your Ligurian has improved.”

“Oh, that?” Booker said once he recovered, wiping tears from the corner of his eyes. “Once I realized that dialect of his was closer to Old French than Tuscan, it was a breeze. Very quaint and charming, in a Norman invader sort of way.”

“Ah, that is _excellent_ to hear. So perhaps _you_ can explain to Nicolò why Genova is no longer an independent country of its own,” Joe replied with a smile that might have been pleasant if not for all the teeth it showed.

“Hey! I can’t be held responsible for _every_ nation Bonaparte invaded,” Booker protested. “He killed me too, you know.”

“You were hung for desertion.”

“Same difference!”

 _“Are you two laughing at my expense?”_ Nicky growled. His fork was stopped halfway to his mouth and he glared suspiciously between each of them in turn, looking entirely prepared to make do with killing them with his fork if he couldn’t have a knife.

 _“No, Nicolò, we were simply_ discussing _how best to explain how the world has changed over the years,_ ” Joe sighed. He had to resist the urge to put a comforting hand over Nicky’s as he did so. That fork was still right there and he had no interest in finding out exactly when Nicky had become such a prodigy with improvised weaponry.

“That _does_ bring up a good point, Joe,” Booker remarked, raising both eyebrows. “Who is going to explain to our murderous Crusader little things like, hmm, electricity? What about the New World? Oh, and _guns_? And for the record, just because I can understand him a little better doesn’t mean I’ve mastered 11th century Genovese grammar overnight, so...” Booker pressed a finger to the tip of his nose like a schoolboy, “...not it.”

“Booker, I _swear_ … _”_

Andy put a hand on Joe’s forearm and gave him a sidelong glance. “This isn’t easy for any of us, Joe, and we’ve all been under stress. Book here was just trying to lighten the mood. He doesn’t mean anything by it.” Joe subsided, nodding to acknowledge the point and biting back a true, if self-centered and inherently obvious retort that no one was suffering from this as much as he was, except possibly Nicky, when he saw the twinkle in Andy’s eyes as she carefully raised her fingertip and touched her nose as well. “Oh, but… not it.”

 _“Alright, Saracen, if you do not tell me the truth of what they are laughing about, we are going to come to blows,”_ Nicky bit off.

 _“Oh, I’m ‘Saracen’ again? Whatever happened to Yusuf?”_ Joe shot back.

 _“That was before your coven tried to poison me with these_ tomatoes _.”_

 _“Have you even_ tried _them yet? You might like them. All your countrymen seem to,”_ Joe groused.

 _“You may call me a Frank in your ignorance of Christendom, Yusuf, but I draw the line at calling me a_ Roman,” Nicky retorted.

Joe pressed a hand over his eyes and not for the first time wondered why he had bothered to get out of bed that morning. “Allah, _what have I done to deserve this?_ ”

He only realized he had not fully switched back from Ligurian for his complaint to the heavens when he heard a chorus of laughter around him and let his hand fall from his eyes. Looking up he saw Andy, Booker, and… and Nicky laughing. Together.

At his expense, granted, but as the long years stretched before him of Nicky, his Nicky, with his memory gone and all the centuries they’d spent together surviving only in Joe’s mind and heart, for a moment the vision did not seem so bleak. He smiled.

* * *

Eventually, Nicky unbent enough to finish his portion of the lasagna, though whether he liked it or not he refused to admit. Joe had a feeling he knew the answer, since it was Nicky’s favorite _alimentari_ where they’d bought the dish originally, the little family-run shop being the source of what his love called _the only acceptable frozen food on the planet._

But it was clear from the way Nicky’s eyelids drooped by the end of the meal that Joe was not the only one feeling utterly wiped out by the day’s events. It just left the three of them with a new problem: how to sleep with a murderous Crusader in their midst.

“We’re going to have to keep watch in shifts,” Andy declared. “Booker, you only went down the one time today, so you take first. Joe, go get some rest and you can have the morning shift. Let's hope Nicky sleeps through the night, see if that helps somehow.”

“You’re taking the middle watch?” Booker said with a raised eyebrow. “It’s a shit job, Andy. I’ll do it if you want.”

“I’ll be fine. I just need a couple hours to rest my eyes and I’ll be ready to go,” Andy said. “But if you’re hurting for something to do, you can take kitchen cleanup duty.”

Booker chuckled ruefully under his breath. “There’s always a catch. Alright, you’ve got it, boss.”

There was a guest bedroom with two single beds which Booker and Andy had staked out as their own. The master bedroom had naturally gone to Nicky and Joe when the four had picked out their rooms.

Now, they were a bed short.

Nicky taking the master bedroom that had been briefly his prison still made the most sense. It was impossible to leave without crossing through the parlor and since it had its own washroom, it could be locked down again easily if this truce was yet another ruse. But Andy was reluctant not to simply lock Nicky up immediately.

“How can he trust us if we don’t trust him in return?” Joe argued.

“Trust got us killed. I know it hurts, Joe, but we can’t take him at his word.”

“I believe Nicky. Before he hadn’t sworn any oaths to us and he thought we’d kidnapped him. If he really was our prisoner, he’d be justified in using _any_ force necessary to escape. Now, he’s given us three days and I trust him to hold to that.”

But the grimace did not leave Andy’s lips and Joe couldn’t blame her entirely. He knew he was a fool for love, for Nicky, that part of his trust was simply that he could not bear the thought that his love would break an oath so easily, that Nicky would perhaps never be trustworthy again without the sight of Jerusalem’s streets ankle-deep in blood to put him on the honorable path. Joe _had_ to believe that Nicky, even with his bright soul buried under fanaticism and hatred, could be trusted to keep his word once he gave it.

“I’ll sleep in front of his door,” Joe offered. “An extra layer of protection. We won’t lock him in, but he’ll have to go through me to get to any of you.”

“He hasn’t shown much problem going through you up until now, Joe,” Andy said dryly.

“Then he won’t mind doing it again if he’s lying and I’ll make sure not to go down quietly this time,” Joe said and didn’t wait for a reply. He pushed past Andy into the parlor to grab some cushions from the couch and spare blankets from the linen closet before heading to the bedroom.

Nicky was already in the bed, stripped to the waist and likely with nothing beneath. He sat upright against three large, piled pillows, his eyes shut as he dozed sitting up. The lamp was switched off and Joe spared a moment to be impressed that Nicky had worked out the mechanism on its own, wondering what Nicky must have thought when confronted with what to his eyes must seem to be a magic lamp. A good reminder in itself that there was more going on behind Nicky’s eyes than he shared with them, as he took in the marvels of the modern world largely without comment to his captors.

Joe moved quietly, laying out the couch cushions on the floor at the foot of Nicky’s bed, covering it in a spare set of sheets and a musty wool blanket. He had just curled up on his side and closed his eyes to sleep when he heard a murmured voice from the bed.

_“Why do you sleep on the floor like a dog?”_

Joe opened his eyes, staring out to the parlor where Booker had set up his armchair for the night at the entrance to the kitchen, angled towards their bedroom. At the moment, the Frenchman was flipping through a book in his lap, his movements careful and delicate with the yellowed pages.

_“I did not think you would appreciate the company.”_

_“Hmm.”_ He heard Nicky shift in the bed and when he turned over to face him, he saw by the dim light of Booker’s lamp that Nicky was leaning back against the cushions, staring at the ceiling. _“You know, I have never slept alone like this. I’ve always shared a bed with my brothers by blood, or later my brothers in Christ, or my fellow soldiers. It is… strange.”_

Joe remained silent, waiting. Was it an invitation, or another trap? Andy’s words came back to him. He might trust Nicky not to escape again, but baring his throat to a Crusader while he slept might lose Joe whatever credit Andy had given him for having an ounce of common sense.

_“I take it they are all dead? If it has been a thousand years, as you said, then everyone I have ever known is gone.”_

Joe’s lips firmed to a line, but they had promised honesty. “ _Yes, that is true._ ”

_“And Christ has not yet returned.”_

Joe stifled a chuckle at the notion, not wanting to give offense when their truce was so delicate. After all, there were still many Christians today who awaited the return of their Savior in their lifetime. “ _Not yet, no._ ”

Nicky hummed in acknowledgment, and Joe had begun to think he’d drifted back to sleep again, when he said, “ _Would you like to share the bed?_ ”

_“That depends. Am I going to wake with your hands around my throat or a pillow over my face?”_

_“You will just have to wait and find out, won’t you?”_

Joe could hear the wry smile in Nicky’s words but beneath it, he heard the loneliness. Allah, he sounded so _young_. “ _You would share a bed with a Saracen?_ ”

_“I already share his home, for now. I doubt the distinction will matter much to God.”_

_“And if it does?”_

_“Then He will forgive me that as well, or He is not God.”_

_“Some of your people would call that heresy.”_

_“Is it? I’m afraid I was not given as much time to study the Holy Book as I would have liked,”_ Nicky said wryly. _“Or perhaps I have studied it, and disagree with those who believe that. I read the Latin testaments many times, beginning to end. Christ’s New Covenant was one of forgiveness, absolving us of our obligation to past laws, instructing us only to love and to give of ourselves to others. I think… many have profited by encouraging us to forget that.”_

Words spoken to the dark, words easier to say in private while the world slept. Once, long ago, Joe had been the darkness to Nicky, the one to whom he could safely whisper these doubts. But that was decades after they’d begun to seek one another out across the battlefield for more than death and to steal a few guilty moments in each other’s company.

He thought there was nothing Nicky could do or say to surprise him, but learning that Nicky had these doubts long before, perhaps the very day of the siege? That was a surprise.

“ _Yusuf, come to bed,”_ Nicky said again. Entreating, not demanding, and the loneliness rang in his words, echoing in Joe’s own heart.

So he did.

* * *

Joe woke to the sound of birds outside the boarded window and the smell of onions and garlic wafting from the open door. There was no clock in the room to tell him the time, but his body knew it was morning, and that he’d overslept.

Nicky sat on top of the covers beside him, dressed and leaning against the pillows. He was staring at his folded hands as if lost in thought and Joe smiled, leaning in to kiss him good morning, when the memory of the day before hit. The smile fell and he stopped himself, his chin hovering at Nicky’s shoulder, and pulled back.

_“Nico, my heart, are you… do you remember…?”_

Nicky turned his head towards him, his eyes shadowed, and shook his head. He said in Ligurian, “ _Nothing more of who you say I was, nor how I came here._ ” He must have seen something of how Joe’s stomach clenched at those words, how despair swept through him, as Nicky frowned in sympathy and added, “ _I am sorry, Yusuf._ _It is clear you mourn and that more than anything else tells me that there may be some truth to what you say. Or at least, that you believe it._ ”

Joe forced down the disappointment that threatened to choke him. _“At least you did not strangle me in the night. I suppose I should be grateful for that.”_

 _“I gave my word. Though, I do not think you would have woken even if I had. You are a very sound sleeper,”_ Nicky said. His lip twitched as he added, _“And you have loyal friends. When I rose for Matins, the Frank reminded me that he was watching in case I harmed you and would respond in kind if I did. Then, when I woke at dawn to pray, the Scythian woman said on no uncertain terms that she would kill me if I tried to leave this room. Could you inquire with her if I may have some bread to break my fast? When I asked, she threatened me with a knife.”_

 _“That sounds like Andromache. Wait here, I’m sure we can do better than bread.”_ Joe grunted as he threw off the blanket and rolled out of bed. He was dressed in a soft t-shirt and sweatpants, comfortable enough to sleep in but covered enough to be ready to run out the door if Nicky made another break for it in the night. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he padded out to the parlor and towards the kitchen, calling as he walked, “Andy! I’m up now. You can let Nicky out for breakfast.”

“Quiet, you. Booker is still sleeping,” came a hissed reply, punctuated by the unmistakable clank of a skillet hitting the stovetop.

When Joe rounded the corner into the kitchen, he stopped in the doorway at the sight before him. Andy was standing at the stovetop, flipping the onions and peppers along with spices in the skillet. The oven was on and from the spices she had laid out, Joe guessed that she was preparing shakshuka.

Nicky had bought the ingredients, they had done so together when they arrived in Rome and stocked up the safe house. Nicky sometimes made shakshuka for them all, but more often as a treat for Joe, in particular, knowing it was a favorite of his.

Joe put a hand on Andy’s shoulder and kissed her cheek. “Thank you, Andy. You didn’t have to do this.”

“I eat breakfast too, you know,” she said, a glint of humor in her eyes.

Joe chuckled under his breath. They both knew, as surely as if she’d shouted it to the sky, that this was Andy’s way of saying she was worried for Joe and trying to offer whatever comfort she could. “And letting me sleep through my shift?”

“Blame that on Booker, he started it. Didn’t come to get me until dawn. I wasn’t about to go back to sleep anyway after that long.”

“Hmm,” Joe said skeptically. Andy paused in her stirring and took the bowl of diced tomatoes from where it sat beside her on the counter, emptying them into the pan. “Ah, the return of the dreaded tomatoes. I wonder what Nicky will think.”

“He’ll probably be too busy having a stroke at so many spices to complain, if I remember anything of Frankish cuisine,” Andy said, picking up her spatula and giving the mix a stir. “This would be a king’s ransom in paprika alone in his day.”

“Oh, I remember.” Joe gave a mock-shudder of horror. “There is a reason we all met in Baghdad. I dragged him there as quickly as possible once he made his peace with Genova, just so I could have a decent meal for once. You should have seen his face the first time he…” Joe stopped, remembering Nicky’s shock and delight when he first tasted a dish doused in cinnamon, a spice his family, even with wealth enough to dedicate a whole cloister, could only dream of in that amount.

A memory that might forever be his alone. Of course, he could serve Nicky cinnamon again, or saffron. He could bathe Nicky in rosewater and dress him in silks and offer again all the wonders he had so delighted in sharing with his Christian knight centuries ago, but it would not be the same. Only he would remember how they’d fed one another fruit with their fingers in the lantern-lit nights of Baghdad when the air smelled of jasmine, or remember the poems written about them and for them, now lost to time and to the waters of the Tigris when the city fell.

The thought must have shown on his face because he looked down in surprise as Andy’s hand clenched tight around his. “It’s going to be ok, Joe,” she said, low and insistent. “He’s still alive and he’s still with us. We’ll get him back.”

“I know, I know, but if we don’t…”

“We will.”

Joe let out a shuddering breath and nodded. “How long until the food’s ready?”

“Fifteen more minutes. You’ve got time to shower if you want. And once Booker is up, you can take Nicky on that walk you promised. We’ll guard your six.”

Joe’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Really? I could have sworn you said, and I’m quoting here, ‘abso-fucking-lutely not’.”

“Do you want to argue about it, or do you want to just accept that I changed my mind?”

“I’m more curious what changed it.”

Andy gave the skillet another stir, not answering right away, before she exhaled and said, “You were in bed together when I woke up.” She glanced over at him. “That was a dumbass move, Joe.”

“I know. But in my defense, he suggested it.”

“Smart man. If we really were his enemies, he’s already taken some pretty ingenious steps to seducing his way to freedom. Anyone with eyes could see he just needs to crook his finger and you’d come running. If he’d wanted to cut your throat, you would have handed him the knife.”

“Even I’m not _that_ stupid.”

“Hmm, I’m going to need to see how today goes before I agree with that.”

“So why allow us out at all?”

Andy huffed a sigh. “Because of what I saw before he knew I was there. He was watching you sleep and the way he looked at you… I thought Nicky, our Nicky, was back.” She hung her head ruefully. “But then he saw _me_ and he asked if the sun had risen yet, in Ligurian, and when I told him it had, he dropped to his knees like a sack and started praying. So, not our Nicky.” She glanced over at Joe. “Don’t give up, Joe. Even if he never remembers, you two have still got a chance. Not like…Anyway. If you think that taking him outside will help, well, you’re the expert. We’ll have your back.”

Joe put an arm around her shoulders, squeezing tight. “Thank you, Andy.”

* * *

“ _The red fruit again?_ ” Nicky said glumly as he sat at the dining table and saw the shakshuka steaming in its skillet.

“ _At least this meal you can eat with bread instead of a fork,_ ” Andy said, spooning her own bowl full and ripping a piece from the loaf she’d set in the middle of the table. “ _See?_ ”

_“No eating knife?”_

_“No knife. Maybe once you’ve gotten through a whole day without killing anyone we can renegotiate knife privileges.”_

Nicky sighed in obvious disappointment but did seem relieved to have a dish he could eat with his hands, tearing off his own piece of bread before ladling his bowl full.

 _“Andy used to hate forks as well, but she eventually learned,”_ Joe said conspiratorially to Nicky as he sat back down. _“With time, I think you will see their use.”_

Nicky raised an eyebrow to show what he thought of this assessment and turned back to his food.

Joe puffed out a steadying breath the second Nicky turned away. It was that _look_ , that same skeptical look as when they’d first eaten at a proper banquet together in Salah ad-Din’s court. He was beginning to find it was the little things like that which knocked him off balance, reminders of memories usually buried by time. That banquet he'd nearly forgotten for happier reasons, for it would become only one of many feasts he and Nicky had attended together and was all but lost among the thousands of meals they’d shared since.

But it was at least 800 years since his Nicky had been anything resembling a picky eater—not since they’d begun to travel together—or showed even the briefest skepticism towards any food Joe presented to him. They knew one another’s preferences better than their own.

It had also been _quite_ some time since Nicky had expanded his taste in food beyond what was available to a Genovese soldier on the road to the Holy Land. So long, in fact, that Joe had forgotten the pleasure of watching Nicky learn that he was wrong about whether he would like a new dish.

Nicky’s eyes flew open at the first bite, his lips still stained with the sauce. The look he shot Joe was incredulous and Joe could not suppress a smirk at the array of emotions twisting and contorting Nicky’s face at what could probably felt like fireworks exploding across his taste buds.

_“This is…”_

_“Yes?”_ Joe grinned.

"… _Hot? But it's not hot, it… it burns but there is also…_ ” Nicky blew out a breath. Color gathered in his cheeks and the whites around his eyes showed. “ _There’s more than one taste after the other?_ _One fades and next, there’s something else. I can’t…what_ is _this?”_

 _“Onions, garlic, paprika, peppers, cumin, coriander, some goat cheese,_ ” Andy ticked off and Joe spared a moment to be impressed that she remembered the old Ligurian names after so long, even if she substituted the modern Italian for ingredients that would not arrive in Europe for centuries to Nicky. “ _Eggs, tomatoes, but that you knew._ ”

 _“It’s… good_ ,” Nicky seemed surprised at himself and took another tentative bite. “ _Very good_.”

“I see ‘Operation: Remind the Italian He Likes Tomatoes’ is ongoing?” Booker rubbed his eyes as he emerged from the hallway, and Joe realized with chagrin that they hadn’t kept their voices down.

“Book, you need rest,” Andy said, turning in her chair at the sight of him.

“Couldn’t really sleep, not with Nicky like this. Kept expecting to wake up with a knife at my throat,” Booker took a spare chair and began ladling himself a bowl of shakshuka. “Once I smelled breakfast, it was all over. So, is our Crusader friend here finally admitting he enjoys the taste of something that isn’t moldy bread and stale water?”

Joe glanced back and saw Nicky was already scraping the bottom of his bowl. “Seems like it.”

“About time. Army rations, they never change,” Booker said and began to eat. “So I’ve been thinking about Nicky here.” He gestured towards Nicky with a flaky piece of bread. “Why the Crusades, right? Guy’s been around for centuries, but _that’s_ the day he gets stuck on? Been wracking my brains trying to figure out why that could be, but I think I’ve got an idea.”

Joe put his fork down on the table and leaned forward despite himself. “Which is?”

“Well, whatever this is, right,” Booker gestured to himself, then to Andy and Joe, “as far as I can tell, it starts when we die the first time, and then however you were that day, you’re stuck like that forever. Well, in my case, how you were after a meal and a shower, but you get the picture. When we come back from getting our brains blown out, normally it’s just our bodies that patch themselves up, but with Nicky this time, maybe…”

“Maybe it’s his mind too,” Joe finished, “fixing him by taking him back to the start.”

Andy grunted. “Yeah. I figured it was something like that too.”

Joe looked between both of them. “Well, I sure as fuck hope not. How are we supposed to fix the thing that fixes _us?”_

He felt nauseated at the thought. Of course, they’d all sat down and talked about this inexplicable gift of theirs, many times in the last 200 years, and how they always returned to the form they had at the moment of their first death. At least, a healthy version. Booker had nearly died from starvation before he was hanged for desertion, but he’d filled out to the image of the man he’d been when he was conscripted into Napoleon’s army as soon as he ate.

Always before, though, their memories were the only part of them that grew beyond the day of their death. The only part that kept any record of their hundreds of years of life and thousands of deaths.

Until now. _“Yusuf, what is going on?”_ Joe blinked and stared in confusion at Nicky, who nodded at his plate. _“You’ve gone green as a corpse from whatever the Frank has said. If the food has been poisoned, I’d rather not find out on my own.”_

 _“My apologies,”_ Joe muttered. _“We were discussing whether your mind was injured and healed itself, and in so doing took your memories of the last thousand years.”_

_“Could it do that?”_

Joe frowned. _“Heal away your memories? We do not know. This is the first time it’s ever happened.”_

 _“I meant, cure an injury to the brain,”_ Nicky said. _“I have seen men who do not remember how to speak after taking a sword to the skull. Could your sorcery heal such a wound?”_

 _“Yes, and very quickly,”_ Andy interrupted.

Nicky nodded to himself. _“And what of other ailments? Poison, plague, drowning?”_

Andy flinched at the last word, the movement so subtle that Joe doubted Nicky caught it. _“They do nothing. Illness takes no hold, poison passes through unnoticed. We cannot be drowned or dropped from a height or beheaded without returning to health in seconds. So I do not suggest you try it.”_

Joe’s lips had parted and he shut them, about to ask like a fool what Andy was talking about. Quick poison could kill them and they would return, but slow poison could mean days of agony before they died. Some plagues were swift enough to kill them, others their bodies shed. And drowning… they did not like to think about drowning.

Which would all be a stupid thing to tell Nicky as he was. His love had agreed to three days of peace but it was too soon to trust him with full knowledge of all their weaknesses. Someday, if he didn’t come back to himself, if he needed to know… they would have to tell him the limits of their gift.

Joe prayed it never came to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank you for reading! As much as I love sharing this little tale with the community I especially love to hear your thoughts along the way! If you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	5. Nicolò

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Formatting note:** As we’re in Nicolò's POV, the italics meaning is reversed. Italics are now used for emphasis and for words that are _not_ Italian or Ligurian.
> 
> This chapter makes reference to "The Old Guard" comic visuals of Nicky and Joe's first meeting outside Jerusalem, more or less frame for frame. If you'd like to follow along, those panels are pretty easy to find online.

Nicolò’s last memory was of the Saracen.

He first laid eyes on the man under a pitiless summer sky on the day the army of the faithful arrived in Jerusalem. His fellow soldiers were at Nicolò’s back, the walls of Holy City towering before him, and the Saracen was pacing the ramparts, outlined by the sun, such that Nicolò had to shield his eyes to look upon him, as if gazing upon an angel of the Lord. One that had no sympathy, no pride, nor love for the Christians camped outside the gates.

He could not have said why, but at the sight of this man on the wall, who was busy barking orders to his men, Nicolò felt the first bite of something that might have been shame. An absurd thought. This man was an infidel, like any of the dozens he’d fought before in Antioch or on the road from Constantinople.

Yet the sense of shame only grew each day as the siege dragged on. Perhaps it was because of the way the man paced—like a she-wolf outside her den, anxious for her newborn pups sheltering within— and how it made Nicolò feel like an invader rather than a liberator. Like he was part of some barbarian horde come to bring blood and ruin to the peace of Christ’s Holy City.

Perhaps it was because that man was a soldier, just like him, and afraid for the battle that was to come when the Christians would inevitably break through the walls, just like Nicolò, and he wondered what else they might share. Could it be that the Saracen too loved Jerusalem, just like him? The moment the army of the faithful had crested the hill and Nicolò saw for the first time the light of the sun glinting off the golden domes, he’d felt a stirring in his breast, a great swelling of adoration and hope, combining in a flash of all-consuming love as if his soul sensed its destiny behind those walls.

After all, how could he not feel love at the sight of Jerusalem? To look upon the Holy City after those three long years of weary toil and starvation was to look upon paradise. Nicolò had gazed upon Jerusalem as a man dying of thirst looks upon an oasis, until his own tears had muddled and blotted the sight from his eyes, and he bowed his head to pray.

The men around him had wept too and for that day’s noon mass, the priest stood just below a small hill that formed a natural theater so all could see Christ's city beyond, bathed in the early summer sunlight, and God’s words had filled Nicolò until he thought his very flesh would burn away, and he would like the Prophet Elijah rise bodily to heaven.

The army of the faithful broke through the city’s walls after the sixth week of laying siege and when its Saracen defenders poured out from the breach, Nicolò wondered if he would see the Saracen knight, the man he’d come to think of as ‘his’ Saracen, among them.

He did not have to wait long.

His Saracen leapt from the crumbling walls, light as a bird, and at the sight, Nicolò’s heart thrilled to finally see him so close. Nicolò jabbed his heels into the flanks of his horse and felt the great muscles bunch as it sprang forward. He would not allow another to have this man. Why this mattered on a battlefield already covered in blood, he could not have put to words, he only knew that he wanted to be closer. That he wanted it so badly without reason or thought that he did not see the arrows shadowing the sky above him until they crashed down upon him. His horse fell, screaming, and Nicolò fell with it.

He could not breathe as he sat up, gasping and choking in the dust, and looked behind to see his horse collapsed, riddled through with arrows. Mercifully dead, poor beast, for there was no sound more horrible than the screams of a dying horse, and he did not have the time to save it from its pain. The Saracen was already upon him. He had waited for Nicolò and had not split away to fight another man when Nicolò’s horse fell. As if the Sarcen also knew that they were meant only for one another.

Up close, Nicolò could finally see the details too distant to make out when the Saracen was far above him on the walls. The chainmail glinting beneath his rich red tabard, the jeweled scabbard at his waist and scimitar in his hand, which glinted with rings, one for each finger. He was full-bearded and black curls spilled out from beneath his helm. And his eyes… his eyes were beautiful.

The thought did not seem strange at that moment for Nicolò, to find beauty in a man he intended to kill, one he had been taught to kill, had suffered and starved and walked as often as ridden horseback on the long slog from Genova to kill. All thoughts of who this man was, if he had a family too, if he loved Jerusalem, if he was also afraid, faded from Nicolò’s mind, overwhelmed by the madness of battle.

The Saracen’s teeth shone in a snarl, and there was no more time for such thoughts. No time for choice, for regret, for learning the answers to all the questions he had asked the air, for he dared not ask God, when he looked up to the walls of Jerusalem and saw this man framed by the sun. All they could offer one another was an honorable death. Whatever the outcome, whomever God chose to fall, at least they could be there for the other at the end.

Nicolò drew back his sword.

* * *

He awoke in darkness.

Nicolò knew he must be somewhere underground from the smell of rot and the chill, stale air. His body hung limp and he felt the swaying motion of being carried across someone’s shoulders. Ahead, two figures walked, dark shadows against a darker gloom. The tunnel was rising upward and before he could wonder if perhaps he was dead, being carried by his Savior and led forward by angels, light exploded across his vision. Nicolò winced in agony so intense he had no time to cry out before pain sent him spiraling back into the dark.

He would soon learn that it was not Christ who carried him, nor angels who led him, and the light was not from any sort of paradise that he’d been taught to expect.

But the truth, it turned out, was no easier to believe.

* * *

“These were _my_ clothes?” Nicolò said, lifting a scrap of cloth that barely covered the chest and shoulders, more like a laborer’s smock for working in the fields than a garment appropriate for the Pope’s city.

“Fashion is not what it once was,” the Saracen, Yusuf, said. He was dressed now in clothes that resembled the ones dangling from Nicolò’s hand - a light gray shirt and black trousers of some tight, coarse fabric, but Nicolò had assumed more would be layered on top before they left for the promised walk. The other man looked practically naked to his eyes. “It’s far more simple, for one thing.”

Nicolò studied the pile before him, enough to clothe a small army, and yet all of it was so flimsy, barely more substantial than undergarments. “What am I to wear on my head?”

“That’s… not very common anymore,” Yusuf said and when Nicolò stared at him, aghast, he continued. “It’s a recent fashion for men and women to go with their hair uncovered. It would look odd at this time of year to do otherwise, when the weather is warm.”

“I am not going into the street with my head and body uncovered as if I were in a…a bathhouse!” Nicolò protested. He wondered if the Saracen could see the heat gathering in his cheeks. It was bad enough to catch himself staring at Yusuf when he changed into the garments he now wore. He had bathed and dressed many times with his brothers in Christ and later with his fellow soldiers. To be sure, sometimes he’d felt the stirrings of desire when a particularly beautiful man stood naked before him, but always before he could ignore it.

With Yusuf, there was no ignoring it. Those dark eyes that had smote him on the battlefield when filled with rage were now lit with kindness and humor. Against them, Nicolò was as a man who had lost his shield, utterly without defense. In the bath, when he had tangled his fingers in Yusuf’s black curls, there was a moment where he had to force himself to remember that this man was his captor at best, and a madman or a demon sent to tempt him at worst. Surely God had sent him as a test of Nicolò’s resolve, which was the thought that pushed him forward in slaying Yusuf the first time. The second time he’d slain Yusuf was less with intent and more from desperation. He'd been nearly out of his mind with fear and rage after the Saracen and the Scythian woman dragged him back into their prison like a disobedient dog. All he could think of was escape.

Yet despite Nicolò killing him, _twice_ , Yusuf knelt beside Nicolò, healthy and alive, indeed unable to die. Neither of them could, supposedly, and that shared sorcery was what made them companions, according to the Saracen, and eventually, lovers over the course of centuries Nicolò could not remember because of some injury. That they were lovers was apparently why Yusuf was always there to offer a gentle touch or a kind word, and Nicolò thought he might choke to death on the shame of what he had done to Yusuf, and what he might have to do again to escape this house and the man who had shown nothing but kindness even when Nicolò offered him only death in return.

Perhaps the shame—and with it, the memory of the questions he'd not dared even ask God, about whether he was on the wrong side of the liberation of Jerusalem—was what stayed his hand for now. Yusuf had promised a walk in one of the city gardens to prove his words were true and that Nicolò was not a prisoner but a patient in need of healing. Yusuf had offered him food to break his fast, clothing from his own back (though he claimed the foreign garments he offered were Nicolò’s own), and had even shared Nicolò’s bed when the empty space wakened a terror in him that was like a vise closing around his lungs, though only hours before Nicolò had wrapped his hands around Yusuf’s throat.

Perhaps Yusuf’s return from death was God’s way of telling Nicolò that it was not his place to kill this man and that was why the Saracen returned again and again. Or perhaps it was to teach Nicolò true humility, and love like that of Christ, by showing him how even a pagan with no knowledge of the Lord could give so much of himself, despite being offered nothing in return. The method of these lessons seemed odd, but who was he to question God?

“What is this?” Nicolò said, spotting a familiar sight amongst the folded clothes in Yusuf’s bag. A hood dyed a deeper shade of black than he’d ever seen, with long sleeves and a shape that was reassuringly loose. “Was this mine as well?”

Yusuf covered his mouth with his hand but Nicolò could see the laughter shining in those dark eyes. “Of course you pick that ugly sack, I can’t believe… Yes, it’s yours, Nicolò, but it is much too hot out there for that, you would roast in your own skin.”

“Will it be as bad as marching in full armor on a cloudless summer day in the Holy Land when the army is low on water?” Nicolò countered. “No? I did not think so. A warm afternoon in Rome is not going to lay me low where Turkish marauders failed.”

“Perhaps. But it is still ugly,” Yusuf laughed.

Nicolò flashed him a grin. “So is what you wear now. Whatever happened to those fine robes you wore upon the wall? Red and gold, like a king. So much better than this.” He tugged at the short, gray sleeve of the tunic Yusuf wore, fingertip brushing the skin of his shoulder.

“If this hood would be out of place on a summer’s day, then I promise you, the robes I wore to battle would draw every eye in the city,” Joe chuckled.

“Hmm,” Nicolò acknowledged. He had never imagined what the man on the wall’s laugh would sound like. He had not dared think they would share any of what was good in life, their sole purpose seemed only to bring one another’s death. Yusuf’s laugh was low and soft, rich with real humor. It was the laugh of a kind man, though Nicolò could not say what made it so. Nicolò’s fingers traced without his bidding down to the Saracen’s hand. “And your rings? There were more of them, one for each finger. I remember how they glinted in the sun.” He brought Yusuf’s hand up to inspect the silver ring on the forefinger of his sword hand. “Why do you wear only these two now?”

Yusuf swallowed. His face was just beyond their entwined fingers, his gaze fixed on Nicolò. “Because you gave them to me.” He glanced down at their hands. “As for the others, they are long gone. One at my father’s tomb, another a gift to a friend I would never see again. One I bartered for food when you and I were starving on the road. The last… I think I saw it in a _museum_. Andromache keeps telling me to steal it back.”

“You should,” came a voice from the doorway.

Nicolò startled, jerking his hand free of Yusuf’s. The Scythian woman was leaning against the doorway, also wearing one of those thin tunics, which didn’t even cover her shoulders, over rough trousers and boots. A silver pendant glimmered below her collarbone. She raised an eyebrow at Nicolò, then turned to Yusuf. “They have no right to what’s yours. Say the word, Joe, and we’ll break into the _British Museum_ and rob them blind for you. I’d consider it my good deed for the day.”

“Oh, let them have it, at least for now. Perhaps it will show up in a student’s paper and have its own immortality.” Yusuf waved her off with a laugh.

Andromache glanced back at Nicolò as if inviting him to join in her skepticism. “He is too generous. But perhaps it’s because you have not told him you miss that ring. I’m sure if you did, he would have it back on his finger by tomorrow morning.”

Yusuf sighed and hung his head. “Andromache…” He said something in that foreign tongue of theirs, the one Nicolò could not parse. It _almost_ sounded like the language of the Franks at times, and he was certain he heard a word or two of Latin mixed in, but overall the tongue was like a cipher he could not read.

“Regardless,” Andromache declared after whatever they’d said in their exchange. “We should leave soon if we are to be back in time for the physician. Meet me at the door when you’re ready.”

“I am ready now.” Nicolò hastened to his feet, unwilling to waste even a second of his promised freedom from the boarded-up house. He dragged the hooded shirt over his head and breathed a sigh of relief to feel the soft fabric settle on his arms and the familiar, modest weight of the hood on his head. There was even a pocket in the front for his hands, a clever design, and the cloth was remarkably soft, like nothing he’d ever felt before, except perhaps when petting the fur of a well-fed grainery cat. Though Yusuf insisted that these many garments were his, he was not sure he believed it until now. At the very least, this hooded shirt belonged to someone with good taste in fabric.

When they stepped out into the main room, the Frank was there, and took one look at Nicolò and raised an eyebrow in question. “I thought we were trying to blend in, not go on a raid. Is there a reason Nicky is dressed like the _Unabomber?”_

Nicolò frowned at the unfamiliar word. “The what?”

“ _Medieval_ modesty, Booker. It’s a long story,” Yusuf clapped a hand on the Frank’s shoulder, then ducked into the kitchen ahead of them.

Nicolò moved to follow Yusuf, only to stop at a hand on his chest and the Scythian woman before him. He had not heard her move, and there was death in her eyes. She stopped him with one hand, her fist clenching in the fabric of the hooded tunic to drag him close.

“Yusuf is a good man. A _kind_ man. He would die for you a thousand times. I know, because I have seen him do it.” She jerked Nicolò closer, hissing, “Losing you would destroy him. What he offers you today is a foolish risk after the harm you have brought to us, but he does this for love of you, to make you _happy_. If you use this gift to flee or to hurt him, there will be no place on this Earth that is safe for you. I will _hunt you down_ wherever you go and I will drag you back here and when I do, I promise I will not be so kind as Yusuf. Just because we cannot die, does not mean we cannot feel pain, and I swear you will have more to fear from me than from your God if you break your oath to him.”

Nicolò bared his teeth, hoping the threat would cover the ice that coursed through his veins, the memory of her knife slashing down. “Is all he has said true? That he and I have been lovers these past thousand years, that we four cannot die, and the world beyond is much changed? That there is no returning to the army of the faithful?”

The Scythian’s eyes narrowed. “It is.”

“Then so long as that story is true, I will have no reason to break my word. But God will not punish me for breaking an oath given to liars and witches and His is the only wrath I fear.” Nicolò crossed himself and made a sign against the evil eye before pushing past the Scythian. This time she made no move to stop him.

Yusuf stood at the open door, talking to the Frank, Booker. His boots, that ones Nicolò had taken the day before in his flight from the house, were on his own feet and he was putting something that looked like a jet black bead in his ear. He tapped it once and inclined his head, saying something in that foreign language. Whatever it was, Booker raised his thumb in response and Yusuf nodded. At the sight of Nicolò, Yusuf’s bright grin returned and he gestured to a second pair of boots on the floor. “Those are yours. I believe you will find them more comfortable than the ones you stole. There is a public garden not far from here, where we may walk undisturbed. I thought it a gentle place to show you how the world has changed, but afterward, we may go wherever you wish. You have been to Rome before?”

“Ten years ago,” Nicolò nodded. “When the bishop of my order brought me and my brothers in Christ there for the synod.”

“Ah, yes, now I remember,” Yusuf gave a wicked grin. “That was the year you and—what was his name?—Alessandro, had a rather memorable evening away from the rest of your brothers.”

Nicolò choked. “I… there was no sin in it, we had not yet taken our vows!”

“Mmm,” Yusuf raised a playful eyebrow. “Oh, it wasn’t an accusation. I've had some memorable evenings of my own thanks to Alessandro.”

“You and Alessandro could not have possibly…” Nicolò stopped himself and felt his face must be burning so hot his hair would catch alight. “You did not mean with Alessandro.”

“No, _habibi_ , I meant when we…” Yusuf trailed off, his laughter dying along with the light in his eyes. It was not the first time Nicolò had seen this mood come over Yusuf, when he would look at Nicolò like a man standing before his wife’s tomb. “Forgive me, I presume too much. I am glad he made you happy, Nicolò. For that alone, I would thank him if we'd ever been so fortunate as to meet.”

Nicolò stared after Yusuf as he turned to open the door. He had told no one of Alessandro, with his cherub's face and golden curls, and how the two of them had shared a bed at the seminary. In Rome, they had seen their chance for a night alone and the privacy of their own room instead of stolen moments hidden in cellars and closets, dodging their brothers and the priests.

Not long after their order returned from the pilgrimage to Rome, Alessandro had been granted a congregation in a seaside town far to the south. Nicolò had been happy for him and hid his tears the last time they lay together before Alessandro left the next day, knowing they would never meet again unless he too was granted a congregation nearby. He had prayed for such an appointment, and felt shame at his own prayers, but... not long after, his older brothers Antonio and Piero had died of fever, and Nicolò’s father sent word to the Bishop, demanding the return of his eldest living son to be his heir.

“What will I find out there? Is anything left of the city I knew?” Nicolò said after a slow breath in and out to control his features. It had been ten years since he last saw Alessandro. A sweet memory, but a distant one. He fell into step beside Yusuf. Behind them, he could feel the Frank and the Scythian watching, though they did not move at once to follow, not until he and Yusuf were halfway to the short staircase leading to the street. With such an attentive honor guard, Nicolò could not tell if he felt more like a prince or a prisoner.

“Of all the great cities of the world, this is one of the slowest to change,” Yusuf said. He stopped outside the door to the street. There was light shining through glass windows embedded in the door. Who would waste precious glass on a _door_? “But there is still more that is different than I can describe. What was left from the pagans you may still recognize, and some of the churches you will know, though many have grown and taken on aspects of later centuries that may seem strange to you.”  
  
Yusuf hesitated. “I will answer all the questions I can, but if you need to rest, we will do so whenever you wish. I have no doubt the changes could be… overwhelming,” he said and pushed out the doors into the morning light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There isn't a strict soundtrack to this story but "Pompeii" by Bastille really is a wonderfully fitting song for Nicolò's state of mind in this fic.
> 
>  **Translations**  
>  Habibi - (Arabic) a casual endearment, similar to "babe", "darling", or "love" and similarly its use is not limited to a romantic context.
> 
> **Thank you for reading! As much as I love sharing this little tale with the community I especially love to hear your thoughts along the way! If you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	6. Nicolò

Yusuf pushed open the door to the outside world and immediately Nicolò winced, letting out a hiss as the sun assaulted his eyes, stabbing agony through his skull. He cringed back, throwing up his arm to shield himself and in a second, Yusuf was there, his hands on Nicolò’s cheek, voice low and frantic. “ _Habibi,_ are you alright? Nicolò? Here, put these on.”

Something slotted over Nicolò’s ears beneath the hood and immediately the world grew shadowed around him, as if a cloud had passed over the sun. He blinked as a visor of some sort dropped over his eyes. The pain lessened.

“It’s smoked glass. It will protect your eyes from the glare,” Yusuf said. His dark eyes gazed back at Nicolò, searching his face with concern. “Are you well enough to continue? We can go back inside if you want.”

Nicolò nodded slowly, touching his hand in wonder to the visor. “This is…a miracle. If I’d had something like this in the Holy Land, many of my days would have been easier.”

Yusuf’s face creased into a blinding grin. “Mine as well. Of all the changes to fashion, this alone may be my favorite.”

“Oh, great, now he _really_ looks like the _Unabomber_.” They must have lingered too long in the doorway. Booker and Andromache came through the open door behind them. Yusuf said something to the Frank in that language of theirs and the Frank disappeared back inside.

“Will someone not explain to me what that word means?” Nicolò grumbled.

“I promise, it would take far too long to explain,” Yusuf said. The Frank appeared again with a second smoked glass visor for, which Yusuf put on— Nicolò noted with some disappointment—obscuring his eyes.

They set out, the Frank and the Scythian dropping behind them, but when Nicolò glanced back they seemed to watch everywhere at once, like wolves on the hunt. Yusuf and Nicolò walked shoulder to shoulder, and as his eyes adjusted to the light he bit his tongue to keep from crying out at the sights around them.

The road beneath their feet was of tightly fitted basalt cobblestones rather than dirt, and the air, in general, was remarkably clean of dust, or smoke from cookfires, or the smell of horses or refuse, as if they were miles outside a city. The buildings too were tightly fitted and covered in plaster, checkered with windows of that same clear glass he had seen on the door, instead of open to the air. But most shocking of all was the glinting metal blocks in a dizzying array of hues that lined the road, each sitting on black wheels. “I have never seen so much iron in my life,” Nicolò breathed. “What are these?”

“Chariots, of a sort.”

“But I have not seen a single horse.”

“They no longer need them, but travel under their own power, directed by their master,” Yusuf said. He must have read the incredulity on Nicolò’s face as he continued, “Over the last decades, more has changed in a lifetime than you and I once saw across centuries. I’m not sure if it’s possible to simplify, or find a common thread to explain but… there are now many objects that work under their own power. Imagine a mill and how it is used to grind wheat, but for every use. Some mills are made small enough to fit in your hand, performing any task you can think of. Travel is only the beginning. Calculations, sending messages over great distances, even weaving cloth, or creating light, all such tasks are much changed in their form from the world we knew. I could take all three of our days, speaking without pause, to tell you everything that has changed, but I think it is better that you understand by experiencing the world. It is how you and I always learned.”

Nicolò took this in, listening to the even rise and fall of Yusuf’s voice. It was easy to imagine him as a storyteller, reciting tales of far off pagan lands where beasts walked on their hind legs and spoke like men, what would seem just as possible as what Yusuf said now. And yet, as they walked, there was no end to the line of chariots. The street was wide and tree-lined, each spaced evenly as if it were a nobleman’s garden. Along the path coming towards them walked two women in deep conversation, gesturing as they spoke. They took no notice of Yusuf and Nicolò, though Nicolò knew he had stared as they passed. He’d thought Andromache’s scant black tunic that bared her shoulders scandalous, but one of the women wore a thin rose-colored dress no longer than a shift, hanging just below her knees, while the other wore trousers that barely covered her thighs and a tunic like Andromache. Her arms glittered with bracelets nearly to the elbow, and both wore the same smoked glass over their eyes.

His visor must have been why they did not catch him staring. Though he could see through the glass clearly, the visor hid his eyes from view. It was… strangely comforting to know he had such a shield, like a helm in battle, for he doubted that it would be the only time he would not be able to avert his gaze from another impossibility at Yusuf’s side.

When Nicolò arrived in Constantinople with the rest of the army, he’d been overwhelmed by its wonders. By the Hagia Sophia greater than any cathedral he’d laid eyes on, the busy streets, the shouts of dozens of languages he’d never heard before, even in a port like Genova. All who laid eyes on him had known him immediately for an interloper, even when Nicolò traveled to the market alone away from the rest of the army, simply by the way he gaped at the palaces of Constantine’s city.

He could not say exactly why he felt calmer here than in Constantinople, except that this day more than anything felt like a dream. And even if he was not dreaming, perhaps it was best to shield his own mind with that gentle pretense. Had not the prophets seen the wonders of the city of God in their dreams?

“You have gone quiet, Nicolò. I hope I am not boring you,” Yusuf teased.

“It would be rude to interrupt a teacher while he is speaking.”

“Oh, I am your teacher now?”

“Would you prefer to be my enemy again?” Nicolò arched an eyebrow.

“I did not know I had ceased to be one in your eyes.”

Something in Yusuf’s tone caused Nicolò to glance over. The shadowed glass hid his eyes, but Nicolò saw again the marks of grief in the clench of Yusuf’s jaw, in the furrow of his brow.

“You spoke truly when you said that you and your companions brought no harm to me until I brought violence first to your home,” Nicolò said. “Even when I threatened you with a blade, you treated me as gently as a child who does not know the danger of the weapon he bears, though it would have been your right to strike me down. You have fed me, clothed me, and kept me company when I was alone. To persist in thinking of you as my enemy no longer seems wisdom to me, but stupidity at best and stubborn pride at worst. For truly, of what value is there in deceiving a single Christian knight if you do not seek to ransom me? If there is no one to ransom me to? Perhaps it is the greater virtue to show faith in another and risk disappointment, rather than see an enemy where there is none.”

But those words did nothing to banish the grief. If anything, Yusuf seemed to crumple beneath it, his steps slowing, his gaze wandering away from Nicolò and to the earth beneath them.

“I’m sorry. My words have grieved you and I don’t know why,” Nicolò said gently.

Yusuf exhaled and pushed a hand up under the visor, pushing it back from his eyes to sit atop his curls. Those dark eyes were reddened, not with full tears, but there was no mistaking their shadow. “Ah. No, Nicolò, it’s not that, it’s just… part of me did not think the two of us were _capable_ of reaching a truce in so short a time. Or rather, did not want to believe it possible.” Yusuf laughed and shook his head as if at his own foolishness. “Because, if we could, that would mean we wasted so much _time_. From the first night, the thought of you haunted me, but I was so convinced what I felt was hatred. I wrapped myself in the rage of war like a cloak against a storm, not daring to allow my heart to overrule my mind, for fifty _years_. And ever since, I have thought of that time as necessary, because we were so different and where we began our lives was so distant. But now I wonder, what if I was wrong? Could it always could have been this easy? Or was the weight of the war on our shoulders always too heavy for two men to push away? What if... we could have left it all behind us from the start, on that battlefield outside Jerusalem? Because fifty years sounds like a paradise after just one day without you. Perhaps neither of us was even in a place to try but... I wish we had _tried_.”

“You miss him,” Nicolò murmured and Yusuf gave a bitter laugh.

“Miss _him_? Nicolò, I _miss_ my first horse and the home I grew up in as a child. I miss cities I loved for hundreds of years that have vanished from the Earth without a trace. I miss my family, and friends who died so long ago I can barely remember their faces. But you? You are my _soul._ ‘I’ cannot miss you, because without you ‘I’ do not exist. I can only pray that I will never meet the ruin I would become if... if you were truly gone forever.”

Nicolò released a slow breath. “But if I am the man you love and something has happened to steal those years from my mind… what happens if I never remember?”

Yusuf’s lips parted and his eyes briefly grew wide, as for a moment he saw that future, going pale as a man who had just witnessed a vision of his own soul burning in damnation, before looking away. “That will be up to you, Nicolò. I would crawl from one end of this world to the other on my knees just for the chance to see your face and I would wait a thousand years for you to grant me one more chance to prove myself worthy of you. But… in my heart I am afraid. I’m afraid because I am no longer the man you met outside of Jerusalem that day. I have seen, and learned, and loved too much. What if that was the only way we could find one another? If the only way for us to have a life together was for us to first start from the same place; when the two of us were both so young and so full of rage, ready to kill and die for what we believed…” Yusuf trailed off and shook his head. “You will always be my soul, my life, but it will be you who must choose what form that life takes.”

“Then for your sake, I hope I remember, Yusuf,” Nicolò murmured. There was no doubting the passion with which this man spoke, no liar or actor could carry such silent pain in every line of their body. In his heart, Nicolò knew it should be the most unbelievable of the tales the Saracen had told him, yet he saw in his mind’s eye his Saracen on the wall, the flash of his sword as they found one another and the beauty he’d found in those dark eyes. Why was it that of all the tales Yusuf told, the one that spoke of how Nicolò and a Saracen infidel became lovers when their lives did not end at being the other’s murderer seemed the easiest of them all to believe? “If nothing else, I believe you are a good man, and if all you say is true, then he was fortunate beyond measure to be loved by one such as you.”

Yusuf nodded and sniffed, staring up at the sky for a second before pulling his visor back down over his eyes. Then he laughed under his breath, though his voice cracked as he spoke, “You know, this is the second time you’ve called me a good man, and the first was right before you drowned me in the bath. If you intend to kill me again, can you at least do so out of Andromache’s sight? Or else I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Nicolò barked a laugh despite himself, relief sweeping him as the weight of those words, of Yusuf’s grief, passed from the two of them like a dark cloud in the sunlight, leaving only a memory. He jabbed Yusuf lightly in the shoulder. “Still you hold that against me! I awoke surrounded by strangers that only a fool would not take to be enemies, in a house I did not know, after fighting in a battle that very morning against an enemy that would gladly take me captive, and I saw my chance to escape! And here you stand, whole and alive, inconvenienced for moments at most because of this wondrous power of yours, griping about a scuffle that didn’t even leave a mark!”

Yusuf gaped then sputtered, “You didn’t know it wouldn’t at the time!”

“But it is the truth! I have left worse scars wrestling my brothers as a child and they did not carry on about it as you do,” Nicolò scoffed, grinning.

“Carry on about it?! You _killed_ me yesterday! Twice!” Yusuf exclaimed, laughing, and Nicolò was pleased to note the deep marks of grief fading from Yusuf’s face.

Perhaps it was not so strange then, Nicolò thought as they continued to walk, this tale of how he’d come to love an infidel when the sound of Yusuf’s laughter lifted his heart as nothing had in years.

If all Yusuf said was true, then perhaps it was God’s design—in His infinite kindness—for the two of them to meet.

* * *

There was a sound of distant roaring like a waterfall, punctuated by the staccato whining of a gnat when suddenly Yusuf stopped them at the corner of a road without warning. Beyond the houses before them, Nicolò could see the tops of a dense cluster of trees, but Yusuf held out an arm to stop him.

“We’re almost there, but we’re going to need to cross the road,” Yusuf warned. “Until now, I kept us to the back streets, though the way was longer. If you wish to keep your eyes closed, I can lead you there by the hand, and then we will be in the gardens.”

“Why would I close my eyes to cross a street?” Nicolò frowned.

Yusuf sighed and scratched the back of his neck. “Well, the first time we saw a _train…_ that is, a machine like one of those chariots, go faster than a horse, you had to lay down at our camp for an hour with a wet cloth over your eyes until the headache passed.”

“How fast could they possibly go?” Nicolò scoffed.

Yusuf raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Do you remember that metal monster you saw flying through the sky when you tried to escape? That was one of these chariots, with wings. It was flying at two hundred times the speed of a horse at full gallop. These chariots you see along the road travel twice the speed of a horse at full gallop. Unless Andromache is driving, then it’s closer to four times.” Yusuf tapped his ear suddenly and looked away, grinning, then muttering something to himself in the language he shared with the others, before glancing back to Nicolò. “I advise you to at least take my hand when we cross, so you may have the option.”

Yusuf offered his hand at this and Nicolò hoped it was not too obvious how he froze for a moment at the sight. It was the same hand he’d seen bejeweled in rings, raising a scimitar to strike him down. The same hand that had clawed at him as he forced his weight down on Yusuf to drown him in the bath, that had freed Nicolò from his bindings before he took Yusuf’s life again. Again and again, he had offered nothing but violence, and every time Yusuf responded with a gentle touch, with trust even when it was undeserved. Nicolò had entwined their hands that morning, only desiring to close the gap between them, as he had on the battlefield, without reason or thought. They had never touched consciously, intentionally, gently, and without a lingering threat of violence.

He wondered what it would feel like.

Warm, it turned out. Yusuf’s hand closed around his with the ease of complete familiarity, squeezing once lightly as if to check it was there before letting the entwined hands fall to their side. Only then, while Nicolò was still adjusting to the sensation—that feeling like tiny sparks of sharp awareness at every inch of flesh that touched—Yusuf guided them around the corner and out... to the edge of a battlefield.

The silent chariots that had lined the streets they walked shrieked and howled like demons as they tore past one another in opposite directions, like armored knights driving at one another full tilt but never colliding. Between them wove vehicles the size of ponies like the one he’d seen when he tried to escape, ridden by men and women, some wearing helms, others with their hair flying free. Nicolò’s eyes could barely track the motion, like trying to pick a single starling out of a cloud of birds in full flight. The ground itself rumbled beneath his feet as if in an earthquake and larger chariots still, twice the size of the others, lumbered through the crowd like war elephants in a cavalry charge.

Terror flooded him, wild and without logic, rooting him to the spot. Nicolò could not help himself. He sucked in a breath and screwed his eyes shut.

Yusuf’s hand tightened around his in reassurance, holding him in place when his own legs felt like water, which was all that kept him from fleeing. But Yusuf said nothing to mock Nicolò for the hubris he’d shown only a moment before. Nicolò kept his eyes shut, breathing hard in and out his nose until, suddenly, the cacophony lessened and Yusuf tugged at his hand.

Nicolò squinted, then his eyes widened and he almost threw himself backward as he saw a striped path before them and people who had lined the street walking freely across the road. To either side of them, the metal behemoths were frozen, parted like the Red Sea, and finally, he could peer inside the chariots to their masters, seated as if in a palanquin, waiting.

“If you should ever need to do this alone, find a nun and stick by her side, if you can. Not all chariots like to wait, especially in this city, but usually, they won’t run down a holy woman.” Humor glimmered in Yusuf’s eyes as he glanced at Nicolò. “And never slow down once you have begun to cross. If you slow down in the middle of the road, they will hit you.”

“Who will?” Nicolò wheezed when a smaller, two-wheeled chariot flew by not a foot in front of his face.

Others on the path turned, shouting curses after the chariot, but Nicolò was frozen. He had felt the wind blow by as it passed. Had he been standing there…

“ _Motorini_ , little chariots.” Yusuf grinned. “Be grateful you cannot die. That’s not even the closest we’ve come to being run down this week.”

Nicolò may have muttered something back, some confirmation that he understood, that he would be careful. But though there was no dust in the road he felt as if his chest was shrinking, squeezing the breath from his body and he screwed his eyes shut again and nodded.

Yusuf’s hand was warm around his, guiding him forward, and Nicolò focused on that sensation. Step by step, the sound of the road receded until, finally, all was quiet.

“Alright, you can open your eyes now,” Yusuf said. “We’re here.”

Nicolò did as he was bidden and looked around to see a gravel path beneath their feet and a grove of gently swaying cypress trees surrounding them. For the first time since he had awoken in the boarded-up house, he released a long breath filled with nothing but relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank you for reading! As much as I love sharing this little tale with the community I especially love to hear your thoughts along the way! If you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	7. Nicolò

The Borghese gardens where they now walked, Nicolò learned, were a sprawling, manicured park dotted with fountains, great houses, flowers, and ponds to create a paradise on Earth. On a bright late morning in summer, the gardens were busy with mothers taking their children out to enjoy the air, couples walking hand in hand like he and Yusuf and—more puzzling—men and women running in scant clothing for no apparent reason. Yusuf had not released his hand when they crossed the busy street into the relative calm of the park and Nicolò found himself in no hurry to remind him of this.

“We were here not long after they started building these gardens, when you and I passed through on our way to Padua. There was a swordmaster there you wanted to train with after you read his book. If I’m remembering right, the land belonged to one of the Pope’s relatives, but then, everything in this city did at some point,” Yusuf said as they walked.

“When was this?” Nicolò asked. He resisted the urge to call Yusuf his teacher again, for that seemed to fluster him, but the man had an eye for the beauty around them and a depth of knowledge he by all appearances wished to share. The sun was high and butter-bright in a sky dotted with clouds drifting like lazy sheep, and Nicolò was in no hurry to return to the dark hallways of the boarded-up house. So he walked, showed polite interest, and avoided saying anything that might embarrass Yusuf or make him second-guess filling the silence so pleasantly.

“Hmm,” Yusuf puffed out his cheek. “Three, four centuries ago? Definitely before the ‘20s, when we left Padua after Master Fabris passed away. That would make it… the early 1600s?”

Nicolò did a quick calculation in his head and blanched. “That… is five-hundred _years_ after I left for the Holy Land.”

Yusuf's lips quirked in a sad smile. “Yes. We learn quickly in this life that time did not stop after we died, nor after everyone we know has died. It continues its march and we march with it or go mad. Sometimes, we do both.”

“When will it end?” Nicolò said and could not keep the fear from his voice.

“I don’t know. You used to say that we will die when it is our time, and it’s simply not our time yet. That is all which separates us from everyone else.” Yusuf gestured to take in the others who walked in the gardens. “There is no magic or philosophy we have yet found to explain what we are or why we are like this. We have spoken to every charlatan sorcerer, every physician, every philosopher or student of man. None have had answers.”

“But perhaps, if this gift could help others…?” Nicolò’s brow furrowed in question. If this ability was not from the Devil—and he found it more difficult by the moment to believe that Yusuf was in league with Hell, even if he was a Saracen, though Nicolò knew the Devil could wear a fair face—then there was only one other option. “If God has granted us this gift, is it not our duty to share it with the rest of His children?”

Yusuf shook his head. “If only we could, I know we would all do so. But just as there is no answer from God for what we are, there is no answer for how to share it.”

“Are there no others like us?” Nicolò protested. “Are the four of us really all that there are?”

Yusuf hesitated as if to weigh his words. “There were two others. One of them you and I never met. He was a companion of Andromache’s, long ago, who fought for Alexander the Great. His name was Lykon, but he was gone before either of us ever met him. The second, Quynh...” Yusuf glanced back towards the Scythian with an unreadable expression, the same one that Nicolò recalled that morning when he’d asked Andromache if all manners of death would heal in an instant. Hiding something, but what Nicolò could not say. “She has gone missing and we have no way to find her. Quynh and Andy are the oldest and they... well, Quynh was everything to Andromache. Together, the four of us traveled the world for centuries. Since we lost her, nothing has really been the same.”

Nicolò nodded as if in understanding, but in truth, Yusuf’s words whirled in his mind without forming any picture he could fathom. The Scythian woman’s lost companion and the man who had fought with Alexander the Great seemed like fanciful tales, stories that he would dismiss as impossible, except Yusuf spoke them with such assurance. It wasn't as if those tales made any more sense than the world around them anyway.

The park was peaceful and nowhere near as terrifying as the river of chariots they had crossed to get here, but every once in a while, there’d be another reminder of where and _when_ he was, far away from the army of the faithful. Another iron bird would fly overhead or some couple would walk by with strange clothes that dazzled his eyes with their color, until he had to look away just to breathe. Each sight, each little reminder felt like a stone added to a heavy pack that he carried until it felt as if all that kept him from crumbling to the earth was Yusuf’s hand wrapped around his.

They were coming to an opening in the path that led to a fountain shaded by trees and around it families took their ease on stone benches. With peace all around them, he tried again to fathom the centuries Yusuf spoke of, of mourning someone lost so long ago. He could not help glancing back at their honor guard. The Scythian and the Frank still shadowed them, keeping back just far enough to not intrude. Without knowing any better, one might take them for one of the many couples that walked the gardens.

“You said there were four of us but what about the Frank?”

“Booker? He’s the youngest, only two-hundred years old,” Yusuf said. “That’s why he does not speak your tongue as Andromache and I do. You taught it to both of us long ago, but by now the language of this land has changed and he speaks the newer form.”

The newer form. Now that Yusuf mentioned it, Nicolò realized what he thought was the Frank’s dialect was being spoken around them. He could only make out snippets from those seated on the bench, most speaking too fast for him to follow, but it bore little resemblance to the Roman dialect he’d heard when making his first pilgrimage there.

“How long are they content to follow us?” Nicolò said.

“The doctor is coming mid-afternoon,” Yusuf said, “but we only need to be back before that and we have hours more until then.”

“And after that, what shall we do?”

“Are you hungry?” Yusuf glanced at him. “We can find something to eat or drink here in the park, though in the past you haven’t been, ah, terribly impressed with the options…”

“No, you misunderstand me,” Nicolò shook his head, “I meant after all of this. The physician will not find anything, you have already said as much just now. Either I will remember or I won’t. What is to happen then?”

“Well, Andromache will want us back at the house for the evening meal...” Yusuf began.

“No, Yusuf, _after_ ,” Nicolò interrupted. He had not meant to raise his voice and some in the gardens turned to stare but that feeling in his chest was returning, like a great hand was squeezing the breath from him. “When the physician finds nothing, what are we to do in the coming days… the coming _years?”_

“Years?” Yusuf said, dumbstruck. “Wait, does this mean you believe me?”

“I…” What did he believe? To think Yusuf was false was to dismiss the evidence of his eyes and ears. He was in a city he barely recognized, and all around him spoke a tongue like his own, yet different. He had seen Yusuf, the Frank, and the Scythian recover from death. He had seen his own wounds heal before his eyes. If a greater will was at play here, or if this was a vision of some sort, he had no way to tell and could only wait for God’s design to be revealed. Until then, he had what was before him and he had Yusuf, the only face he knew from before he woke. The face of the man he had sought to kill and who now offered him nothing but kindness.

Suddenly, he felt very tired. “Yes, I believe you, Yusuf. What else can I do?” he said, gesturing to take in the world around them. “But what will happen after today? What am I to do in this world where all I’ve ever known is gone? Where am I to go if I cannot return to the army of the faithful, or to my father’s house?”

“There’s no need to fear on that count, Nicolò. We are not without means,” Yusuf protested. “The house you have seen is only a stopping point while you heal. When you are well enough to travel, we will take you home with us.”

“As your prisoner? As a slave? You say I have lived a thousand years and will live thousands more. Am I to have no freedom in that time? And if I am free, am I expected to offer nothing in return to pay my way?” Nicolò shot back. The tightness in his chest felt less like a hand squeezing his chest and more like one clawing at him from the inside. “What is expected of me, Yusuf? What am I supposed to _do?”_

“Nothing, Nicolò, nothing is expected of you,” Yusuf said, his tone soothing as his hand tightened around Nicolò’s. “We will take care of you.”

“I am not a child!” Nicolò wrenched his hand free. His hood fell back as he did so, at the violence of the motion, and Yusuf was right, the tunic was hot, and though he shoved the sleeves back from his arms he still felt he was overheating, like the hand in his chest would claw its way free. “I am a man! I am a soldier of God, and once Jerusalem was free, I was to return to my father’s house in Genova and it was to be _my_ house to govern when he passed! But now you say all of that is _gone_. That I have no family, no property, or means to make my own way in the world. I don’t even speak the language of my own land anymore! Two days ago I stood before the Holy City with an army at my side and now I am _here_ and if all you say is true then I have lost _everything!”_

He was breathing hard, gasping for air and yet he felt no relief. Above, the sky roared as one of those iron birds flew overhead, and no one around them noticed or looked up. The clothing of the strangers around them, which had faded to the background as yet another foreign sight, easy to ignore after three years on the road from Genova to the Holy Land, suddenly grated on his nerves. There was nowhere safe to look that was not filled with reminders. Not the trees so perfectly tamed they looked like an artist’s drawings, not the men and women around him in their strange clothing, not even the sky itself was safe. Nowhere was safe, nothing was familiar, and with each step, each kind word he knew all the more that Yusuf spoke the truth: that there was no going back.

The path around them had cleared and none of the passersby seemed willing to approach the two shouting men, so at least the way was clear to a stone bench by the edge of the path. Nicolò stumbled towards it, half expecting Yusuf, or the Scythian, or the Frank to tackle him to the ground, but there was no hand to stop him. Nicolò collapsed onto the seat and tore the visor off and buried his face in his hands. To block out the world and _breathe,_ just for a moment, without seeing something new and terrifying.

There was a rustle of cloth that he could only assume was Yusuf taking the seat beside him. He picked up the visor from the ground and put it in his pocket, but said nothing. Far away, church bells tolled the hour.

“This is the second time I have heard the bells today,” Nicolò croaked. “Yet no one stops to pray, not even in the Pope’s own city. Have the people forgotten God Himself in this new age, Yusuf? Is nothing as it was?”

He looked up and saw agony lining Yusuf’s face to match that in his own heart. Yusuf’s hands clenched on his knees as if to physically hold himself back from reaching for Nicolò. “All is not lost,” Yusuf said, his voice rough with emotion so it seemed as much that he tried to soothe himself. “You are alive and there are places that still worship God in the way you would find familiar. There are still cathedrals that have stood since you came here as a young man. There is much that time has stolen, but not everything,” Yusuf hesitated, looking about him, and following his gaze, Nicolò saw the Frank and the Scythian standing across the way. The woman nodded. Yusuf turned back to him, “Would it help if we were to go somewhere familiar, somewhere you could pray in peace?”

“Can any such place exist after a thousand years?” Nicolò said dully. “And even if it did, would I be _allowed_ to go, Saracen?”

Yusuf flinched. He glanced away, repeating that strange gesture from earlier, touching his hand to his ear and speaking to himself in that foreign gabble, before glancing back. Across the way, the Frank took something the size of a small book from his pocket, holding it in one hand and stared at it intently. “We’ll find somewhere and we’ll go, wherever it is.”

As if summoned, the Scythian and the Frank approached. It was the Frank, Booker, who spoke up, “I’ve got a few possibilities here. Should I just… go down the list?”

Nicolò looked down in surprise as a hand squeezed his reassuringly. Yusuf’s gaze was fixed on the Frank, he did not appear to realize he’d reached out to offer comfort to Nicolò without looking, indeed, did not seem aware that he had done so even now. “I… yes. I will tell you if I recognize one,” Nicolò said.

The Frank’s accent was difficult as ever to parse but he began, “San Paolo fuori le Mura, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Pietro in Vaticano…”

Yusuf shook his head, interrupting before Nicolò could parse the Frank’s dialect, “No, none of those. They’re on the sites of old churches, but there are barely any scraps left of the originals.” There was a pause, the Frank and the Scythian stared outright at Yusuf. “What? I’ve been with a Catholic for over eight hundred years, I should _hope_ I know my churches by now!”

“I didn’t say anything,” the Frank protested and cleared his throat to continue, “Santa Costanza, Santa Sabina, Santa P—”

Nicolò straightened and could not keep the eagerness from his voice, “Santa Sabina? The ancient basilica on the Aventine?”

The Frank nodded cautiously, “Yes, but I’m not sure…” he glanced over at the Scythian woman.

Yusuf turned to Nicolò. “Is this a church you have visited?”

“With my brothers at the seminary, yes. Our bishop had business with the cardinal, and we spent the day there in prayer while they spoke,” he said fervently. “I never wanted to leave. The basilica, Yusuf, you must see it, the wonder of it...” Nicolò cut himself off as he realized what he was doing. His hand was clasped atop Yusuf’s and he had turned towards him on instinct to share his excitement. Towards Yusuf, a Saracen and an infidel that Nicolò had been taught could only be an enemy to his faith. He cleared his throat and said in a more subdued tone, “To return there would be a balm for the soul.”

“On foot, Santa Sabina is close to an hour away,” Booker interrupted. “And walking through the center of this city might not be… easy, for our friend here.”

“We’ll just take a _taxi_.” The Scythian woman shrugged as Yusuf and the Frank shot her a look. “What? It will take us ten minutes to get there and it gets us off the street. He has to get used to _cars_ at some point.”

“A Crusader in an Italian _taxi_ ,” the Frank marveled and seemed to savor the thought like a fine wine before nodding to himself. “Sure, what could go wrong?”

Yusuf, however, did not appear to relish the idea. If anything, he looked like a man who had just learned they were sending children into battle first. “Is there nowhere else we could go, somewhere closer? I don’t think he’s ready yet. If just walking down the street is a shock, then riding in one of those death traps…”

“What is a _taxi_ and why do you think I would not be equal to the task, Yusuf?” Nicolò shot back.

Yusuf appeared to flounder. “It’s a chariot, like the ones you saw on the road here, but for hire. But I don’t think…”

“It will bring us to Santa Sabina and back with time to spare to see this physician?” Nicolò said.

“Yes, but the drivers in this city have a reputation, one worse than even Andromache…” The Scythian woman leaned down and smacked Yusuf in the arm. “Perhaps if we blindfold him, the shock won’t be as bad. That seemed to help when we crossed the street.”

“I am _not_ ,” Nicolò bit off, “wearing a blindfold to a house of the Lord like a beggar. Whatever this _taxi_ brings, I will bear it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank you for reading! I love to hear people's thoughts while they're reading, so if you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	8. Nicolò

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Crusader in an Italian taxi. What could go wrong?

It might have been wiser, Nicolò thought as he swallowed back a scream and possibly some vomit, if he had accepted the blindfold. But if he asked for one now, he would lose not only his dignity, but probably the battle against one of the two forces building at the back of his throat.

All he could do was put his elbows on his knees, his head between his bent arms to block his vision, and try his best to _breathe_.

Nicolò was crammed into the back of the chariot on a cushioned seat clearly meant for two between Booker and Yusuf, with Andromache in the front beside the driver, a man about Nicolò’s age that wore a blue and white striped shirt and who spoke Booker’s odd dialect but at twice the speed. The only words Nicolò could make out were when the driver repeated Santa Sabina back to Andromache. When she flashed him a wad of folded-up papers, he’d grinned like a fox.

“My God, Joe, we’re not even out of the park yet,” Booker groaned. “If he throws up on one of us, I swear…”

“Hey,” Yusuf snapped, “I said this was a bad idea. If he’s sick, that’s on you, not me.”

“From the look of it, it’s going to be on _all_ of us whether we like it or not.”

“Would you two,” Nicolò wheezed, “please be silent so I can die in peace.”

“It won’t do you any good,” Andromache chimed in from the front of the chariot, “you’ll just come back.”

The chariot lurched around a corner and Nicolò’s stomach roiled as if he’d drank stale water. He stole a glance out the window only to see the world flying by faster than he could follow, trees blurring into smudges of green, people and chariots and buildings whirling by too quickly to tell apart.

Nicolò sucked in a breath that he would rather die than admit was closer to a squeak when the chariot reached the bottom of the winding road down the hill and broke out into a wide-open square dominated by an Egyptian spire at its center. Hundreds of people swarmed the plaza, walking or sitting at the foot of the towering stone. Colossal domed buildings stood like sentries at the far end of the square flanking a road that stretched farther than the eye could see, straight as an arrow into the heart of the city. Nicolò’s heart jumped to his throat, unable to comprehend the sight before him, grander than any he had seen even when musing on the ruins left by the ancient pagans of Rome.

He let loose a strangled yelp when the chariot swerved again suddenly, missing one of the passersby by inches as it darted down a side road. Nicolò’s gorge rose again when a new rush of speed pressed him back against the cushioned seat and the world became a blur of plaster buildings and multi-hued people in outlandish clothing. Each twist of the chariot tugged his body from one side to the other like he was on a rocking ship, yet Andromache, Booker, and Yusuf hardly blinked. They stared out the window at the sights speeding by as if they held all the excitement of a cow pasture.

Mother of God, he was going to be _sick._

Nicolò screwed his eyes shut and bent double, one hand clamped over his mouth, sweat prickling his forehead. Maybe the hood _was_ too warm, but he couldn’t do anything about that now. If he moved he was certain it would be over as the car pitched like a boat in a storm. He should tell the others, at least warn Yusuf to save himself if he could.

There was the rapid-fire of conversation from just in front of him, the driver saying something in the new Roman dialect too fast for Nicolò to understand. “Driver says he’ll make us walk if Nicky here loses his lunch,” Andromache called back.

Nicolò whimpered and tightened his hand over his mouth, long past the point of being able to defend his own honor.

“Umm, Andy, maybe we should just tell him to pull over anyway. The poor guy’s gone _green_ ,” Booker said. He pulled his knees up and hunched against his side of the chariot, trying in vain to put as much distance between them as possible in the cramped space.

“Oh, like you two were any better the first time we rode a _train_ ,” Yusuf huffed in exasperation and there was a chorus of protests from the other two but Nicolò was too far gone to hear it, lost in prayers that the world would just _stop spinning_.

Then, just as Nicolò’s strength threatened to fail, there was a light touch on his back, fingertips brushing the fabric of his hooded tunic. A gentle hand settled and began to rub slow, soothing circles. Nicolò did not have to look up to know it was Yusuf.

“I’m sorry if this is an intrusion,” Yusuf whispered gently in his ear. “But this should help. I will stop if you wish.”

Nicolò swallowed, not sure if shaking his head would make Yusuf stop or keep going, just not wanting him to stop and too miserable to care about dignity.

Miraculously, his nausea _did_ ease. Nicolò even dared to look up again, just as the chariot was rumbled over a bridge that stretched across what must have been the Tiber. The chariot then swept from the bridge and onto the road running parallel to the river on the far side. More stopped chariots lined the streets, and buildings filled his view on Booker’s side, painted white and beige with roofs of terra cotta, each on its own as tall as a church and checkered with glass windows.

The road grew smooth, so smooth it was like nothing was beneath them at all, and beyond Yusuf on the left, the green waters of the Tiber unfurled like a snake sunning itself on a bright morning. Bridges crisscrossed the river, more than had ever been there when Nicolò had traveled to the city long ago when only a handful of the crumbling pagan structures remained to cross the water and few were strong enough to bear a wagon.

“It is faster if we cross to this side. The road is not so cramped,” Yusuf explained, answering a question that Nicolò had barely begun to form in his mind, for Santa Sabina was on the same side of the Tiber as the city, while they had traveled inexplicably to the far bank. “If you can bear it, you should continue to watch the river. It will help with the sickness.”

Nicolò gave a mute nod, still not trusting himself to speak. Yusuf’s hand had not moved from his back, but still traced lazy circles that kept the sickness at bay. And, Nicolò found, the sight of the river was a wonder of its own.

The Tiber was clean now. When he had traveled here with his seminary, the river was choked with refuse and the occasional animal corpse, when the body bobbing down the river wasn’t an unlucky man, for Rome was a dangerous city to travel at night without a guard, and those who failed to remember this often as not found their final resting place in the water.

But now, Rome’s river was clear as any Nicolò had seen in the countryside. Sturdy brick walls kept the water within its banks, while people walked along a stone pavement to either side as if it were a garden. Beyond the Tiber, church towers stood out amidst the trees, flying by at the speed of a galloping horse, but the longer Nicolò watched, the less the speed twisted his stomach. In a matter of minutes, an island he could only assume was San Bartolomeo drew abreast and then vanished behind them, receding into the distance.

“No wonder there are so many chariots,” Nicolò murmured. “A mount as comfortable as a palanquin that travels faster than the wind? It would be wonderful if it wasn’t so horrible.” Even speaking so little brought his gorge back up and he winced as the chariot swooped under a bridge and back up again like a cresting dolphin.

“I think you’ll find there are many wonderful things in this new age, if you give them a chance,” Yusuf said gently.

“I am not sure how much more there could be. This chariot alone would change... everything. The world,” Nicolò mused. “Look how many there are. If each carried just five men like this, traveling at twice the speed of a galloping horse without growing weary? With wonders like this, our army would have reached the Holy Land in months instead of years.”

Yusuf’s hand stopped on his back.

The inside of the chariot went deadly quiet. Andromache shifted in her seat.

“Oh, shit,” Booker said under his breath and cracked the silence like an egg.

“To do what, Nicolò?” Andromache said and though her tone did not change there was an undercurrent like the warning snarl of a mastiff.

“To liberate Jerusalem, of course,” Nicolò explained, as he had answered in Constantinople and in Antioch when asked by curious local Christians of their cause. Only at that moment did Nicolò notice Booker making a frantic throat-cutting motion at him, mouthing _stop_.

“And kill Yusuf?” Andromache said with icy calm.

“Come on, boss,” Booker broke in. “He was just a kid. You can’t hold him responsible for the entire fucking war.”

“I want to hear what he has to say,” Andromache said, “now that he has broken bread with a Saracen.”

“I…” Nicolò glanced over at Yusuf, half-expecting to see the man’s face twisted in anger on his behalf after he had jumped so many times to Nicolò’s defense. But Yusuf seemed to have withdrawn into himself. He took his hand from Nicolò’s back and turned to look out the window to the river passing by, his lips drawn tight together, saying nothing. “Yusuf is blameless, I know that now, but our cause was just. The pagans who controlled the city were torturing and murdering Christian pilgrims on the road…”

Yusuf laughed, just once under his breath. He did not look at Nicolò. “Ah yes, that was what your Pope said, wasn’t it?”

Yusuf’s voice was hard with disdain and only now a smoldering anger twisted his features, but not on Nicolò's behalf. This expression was one of quiet rage, like nothing Nicolò had ever seen on Yusuf’s except… except on the battlefield, when this man raised his sword to strike Nicolò down. A sharp, defensive anger of his own stabbed Nicolò’s heart, shot through with shame that he ignored, and his lips curled back as he snapped, “What are you implying, _Saracen_ , that he lied? He is God’s voice on Earth.”

Finally, Yusuf turned and looked over at him and for the first time, Nicolò felt the unfathomable weight of the centuries behind those dark eyes. “You are so _young_. I had forgotten what that was like.”

Yusuf turned away to look back out the window.

“Don’t.”

Nicolò jerked around to stare at the Frank’s hand resting on his arm before he could summon the outrage to do the same to Yusuf, to _demand_ his attention and answers for how he dared presume to know the mind of His Holiness. Booker met his eye and slowly shook his head, then gestured for Nicolò to lean in closer, as if inviting him into his confidence, though in the confines of the chariot there was no real privacy to be had.

“Leave it be. He’s not angry with you. Neither of them are, not really,” Booker said, slowly enough for Nicolò to follow. “They’ve seen a lot, more than either of us can really imagine. Sometimes it just… bubbles up. All that time, all those memories. You were like that too once. They just need a moment.”

Nicolò opened his mouth to protest, then stopped himself. There was no anger in the Frank’s expression, nothing but a sort of amused resignation in the lopsided twist of his mouth. “And you? Are you ever like that?”

Booker snorted and offered a self-deprecating smile, but the amusement had fled his eyes when he said, “I’m getting there.”

* * *

The silence in the chariot was stifling by the time they pulled back over another bridge towards the city center, dipping onto a cobbled road that jolted the wheels of the chariot. Briefly, Nicolò caught one of those disorienting glimpses of another time and the city he had once known. All but fragments were unfamiliar: a church tower here, the shape of a building there. But just before they followed the road up to the Aventine Hill, atop which sat the Basilica of Santa Sabina, he saw it: the racing fields of the Circus Maximus.

There had been a mill there when he and his brothers visited the city and a field where sheep and cattle were allowed to graze. The long oval ring of the field was unmistakable and he craned his neck to catch another glimpse before they turned a corner by a crumbling brick wall, and it vanished from sight. The chariot slowed to a stop outside a wall of brick he would never on his own have recognized for the street of pitted stone he had walked with his brothers up to the hill overlooking the river.

“I’ve got this, go on,” Andromache said, craning to nod to the men crammed in together at the back. In her hand was a wad of folded papers.

“You’re not coming?” Nicolò frowned.

Booker nudged Nicolò to get his attention and muttered, “Andromache will handle the fare, then meet us after. She prefers to wait outside, guard the door, you know. Not a great lover of churches.”

Nicolò stared, aghast. “Is she a… a _pagan_?”

Andromache laughed and continued flipping through her wad of paper as she called back, “Yeah. Let’s go with that.”

Nicolò gaped, struggling to process this information, for he had assumed Andromache was at least a Greek Christian when he felt a tug on his arm.

“Come on, brother,” Booker said. The door was open and he stood outside, leaning against the frame of the chariot and offering a hand. “I still remember the words. I can pray with you, if you want company.”

Nicolò accepted the hand, stumbling a little as he unfolded from the back of the chariot. The ground felt as if it swayed beneath his feet and he took a deep breath of the air around them, smelling flowers on the breeze. A tranquil silence lay upon the crest of the Aventine Hill, as if radiating out from Santa Sabina, the high walls now visible beyond the brick gate. Then, he remembered.

“But… what of Yusuf?” Behind him, the Saracen stood on the other side of the car, still looking away, towards the wall and up to the roof of the basilica. He had not looked at Nicolò since the argument in the car, if it could even be called that, when a look from Yusuf had shredded him down to his soul. Yusuf had called him young and he had felt like a child playing at war under the weight of those years, that utter dismissal.

“Have you forgotten? He’s an infidel,” Booker said and began to walk towards the basilica. “He’ll follow us once he’s cooled down a bit, but he won’t pray, not here at least. He’s only here for you, to make you happy.”

Nicolò followed him, fighting the urge to steal another glance back. Why did each step feel as if it stretched at a tether tied around his heart? “Will he be alright? He has already done much for me, I would not wish him to stay if this is an uncomfortable place for him.”

“Heh, don’t worry about him. You’ve dragged him to every church in Europe, probably the whole world at this point, and I know by now that those trips weren't just for you. He enjoys the art.” Booker glanced over at him with a raised eyebrow, “Though, it is strange to hear you worry about him after you killed him yesterday. Twice.”

Nicolò’s jaw clenched and he fixed his gaze on the ground, shame welling in his chest and up to his face until he felt he must burn with it. “That was wrong of me. I was not in my right mind.”

“Hmm. You seemed pretty sure of what you were doing when you cut my throat.”

Nicolò flinched, drawing his shoulders inward at the memory. “I am sorry, I thought you were my enemy. I will do penance and humbly ask your forgiveness as well as that of God.”

“And not for Joe and Andy?” Booker snorted.

“The Church does not demand penance for them. They are pagans,” Nicolò said, still looking down at his feet as he walked, when he realized Booker had stopped in his tracks, staring at him.

 _“Nom de dieu,”_ Booker muttered, staring at Nicolò, stricken. He shook his head and trotted up to draw astride Nicolò once more. “Did they tell you that when you went to war?”

“The Pope himself promised the remission of all sins to those who fought and died to reclaim the Holy Land from the pagans. So, how could there be penance required for killing a pagan?” Nicolò said bitterly. Had he remained a priest, he would have been forbidden to make the pilgrimage to liberate Jerusalem, forbidden to shed blood at all. Penance was demanded of so much in the sinful existence of humanity and yet, in this one instance, none was required. The irony was not lost on him, but who was he to question?

“Shit. War never changes, huh?” Booker said with a hollow chuckle. “Those bastards at the top always promise the world to the poor guys like us down in the muck who actually have to fight. Congratulations, by the way. Sounds like you beat the Church at its own game.”

Nicolò frowned. “Excuse me?”

“You fought—and died, don’t forget—driving the pagans out of Jerusalem,” Booker pointed out. “You even managed to die fighting another soldier, an actual Saracen dog, not some poor, terrified kids. And if Joe was anything then like he is now, he was a hell of a fighter. That’s got to be worth the full, lifetime guarantee of sins pardoned, right? And you’ve got a lot of lifetime left ahead of you. You don’t need to step inside a church like this ever again.”

Nicolò followed Booker’s nod to gaze upon the full majesty of the Santa Sabina. The church had once towered above the Aventine Hill, but now the once-dominant basilica was only one of the many grand buildings he had seen along the way. White marble pillars flanked the wooden door and more iron chariots were stopped outside. What if the interior was not as it had once been, back when he had marveled at the basilica with Alessandro and his brothers in Christ? What if nothing of his own world remained, anywhere?

“I suppose you’re right,” Nicolò murmured. “But then why don’t I _feel_ like I am forgiven after what happened in the Holy Land?”

Booker’s hand landed on his shoulder and gave it a companionable squeeze. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet, kid,” he said and walked past Nicolò into the basilica.

But Nicolò hesitated before following. He took in the gray, seamless stone that blanketed the once green field outside the basilica. Remembered a time when these streets were alive with people, back when he and his brothers had climbed the path in single file from the heart of the city to this island of tranquility at its edge. He let out a slow breath and looked behind him.

Yusuf and Andromache’s hadn’t moved from where the chariot left them. Their heads were bowed in conversation and Andromache’s hand rested on Yusuf’s shoulder. Neither looked up as he watched. He could run now if he was quick. Booker was inside. Neither of these two would notice.

But to what end and to what gain? He had nowhere to go.

Nicolò turned his back on Yusuf and the Scythian and entered the basilica.

* * *

Nicolò's steps echoed on the marble and his hand found the font of holy water by the door on instinct, touching it to cross himself. Then, he looked up. He had not realized how great was the fear that tightened his chest before he stepped over the threshold. Would anything really be the same? How could it, if so much time had passed?

But the light that streamed in golden chains from the high windows was the same, as were the white pillars that lined the nave and the patterned marble floors of red and green. The mosaic above the altar might have changed, he could not recall exactly, but it was a small detail when looking up at the soaring vault, feeling his soul rise with the sight. The tightness in his chest eased for the first time since he awoke in the boarded-up house. His shoulders straightened.

Two days ago he had stood before the gates of Jerusalem, parched with thirst, wracked with heat and burning hunger of the body and of the soul. Yet here he was now, in Rome, on the other side of the world in what felt like a breath. His mind reeled at how this was possible, whether he’d been plucked by angels from the battlefield and placed back in the city where, once, he had thought it would be his destiny to serve God as did the holy men that surrounded him.

Yusuf had called him a child, but Nicolò was an old man now compared to the youth he was the last time he stood within the Santa Sabina. He’d been barely twenty years old and had seen so little of the world outside Genova. That Nicolò had believed without question that there was good in everyone, and it was easy to believe that when all his life had been planned on his behalf; governed by his father, by the priests, by the bishop of his order. He had not yet tasted the betrayal of having his dream stolen out from under him. He was not yet wracked by that guilt, or by hunger, thirst, and the deep soul-weariness of the long road to Jerusalem. He had not yet tasted war. It was all so distant to that boy in the seminary, wrapped in daily prayer.

Yet here Nicolò stood, a thousand years later, in a basilica that was already centuries old when he was born and that, in all likelihood, would exist for centuries more, just like him.

Just like _him._

And suddenly, Nicolò knew what he had to do.

There were chairs lining the aisle to the altar, with a scattering of worshippers seated in them. Booker had taken a seat at the back corner closest to the door. He looked up at the sound of Nicolò’s footsteps and waved, gesturing to a seat beside him, but Nicolò shook his head and held up a hand for him to wait.

He could feel Booker’s eyes tracking him even as Nicolò found what he was looking for. God was with him. He did not need to go in search of the priest, for the man stepped from the confessional booth on the far wall beyond the pillars just as worshipper crossed herself and left.

There was so little time. And so much too. He did not know what the next day would bring but he had this one chance before him now.

 _“Father,”_ Nicolò said, _"may I speak with you?”_

The priest frowned as he turned to face him. “Are you speaking… Latin?” he said in Booker’s dialect, the modern tongue of this land.

 _“Yes, do you not?”_ Nicolò’s blood chilled. Was it possible, in the Pope’s city, that a priest of so great a basilica as Santa Sabina did not speak the language of the Church?

“No, I do, I do. I just wasn’t expecting to do so today,” the priest laughed, still speaking Booker’s dialect. But after taking a breath he seemed to focus. Nicolò’s knees nearly gave out with relief as the priest said in clear, measured Latin, _“How may I help you, my son?”_

And Nicolò told him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Note: the speech by Pope Urban II as recorded by Guibert, Abbot of Nogent was referenced with regards to the call to the Crusades that Nicky followed (warning: it's one of the more gruesome ones).
> 
>   
> **Thank you for reading! I love to hear people's thoughts while they're reading, so if you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	9. Joe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the Basilica of Santa Sabina.

“Looks like Nicky went inside. Good. For a second there, I thought he was going to make a break for it,” Andy observed before turning back to Joe. “Booker can keep an eye on him for a moment, Joe. Just breathe.”

“I should be in there,” Joe muttered but leaned into Andy and tightened his arm around her in return.

“You want to take care of him, I get it, but this is hard on you too,” Andy said. She shook her head. “And I haven't been making it any easier. I’m sorry. I just… you know me. Hearing about the fucking Church like that always sets me off, especially in this city and I... I’m sorry. It was an asshole thing of me to do, putting him on the spot like that, and dragging up bad memories for you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Joe, you don’t need to try to make me feel better, I…”

“No, Andy, I mean,” Joe sighed and pulled away, pinching the bridge of his nose for a second before looking at her, pleading, “I don’t _have_ bad memories of Nicky saying things like that because, by the time we spoke for more five minutes without _killing_ each other, he wasn’t that man anymore.”

Andy went still, her eyes widened and then softened in understanding, “Oh, _Joe_.”

He chuckled bitterly. “It was a bad time, Andy. Sure, I met the love of my life because of it, but there’s no pretending otherwise. Those were _dark_ days for everyone and the fighting was… complicated and ugly, and after fifty years, neither of us could say we were innocent. But at least after Jerusalem, Nicky _knew_ the Church had lied to him. He figured all of that out on his own. This Nicky, now? He _doesn’t_ know that, not yet. He hasn’t seen the same things and I… I don’t know how to tell him. I’m not sure I know where to _begin_.”

“Hey, Joe, shhh,” Andy said. She squeezed his shoulders once. “We’ll figure it out. He’s just a fanatic, right? We’ve dealt with fanatics before and he’s still _Nicky_. He’ll find a way to get there, eventually, I can tell just from the way he looks at you. The seeds are all there."

Joe snorted a laugh, his throat tight. “Really, boss, the power of love is going to fix it? And I thought _I_ was the romantic.”

“Give me a little credit. You don’t live as long as I have without seeing what’s in front of you, kid,” Andy teased, and Joe’s lips quirked. Only Andy could make _him_ feel young. “If this doesn’t solve itself on its own, and I sure as shit hope it does, at least he’s got you as motivation and about nine centuries between him and the ghouls who filled his head with that bullshit in the first place. It might take a bit. Hell, you might want to kill him a few more times before the end, and I won’t stop you, but he’ll come back to us. I know it.”

“Thank you, Andy,” Joe said and pressed his forehead against hers as they held each other for a moment. He cleared his throat when he broke away. “Ok, I think we’ve stuck Booker with babysitting duty long enough. Are you sure you don’t want to come in?”

Andy waved him off. “Nah. Someone has to guard the door in case he makes a run for it. Tell Nicky if he's good, I’ll treat him to gelato after to apologize. It'll blow his fucking mind.”

* * *

Joe was still chuckling to himself when he found Nicky and Booker praying side by side in the basilica. Nicky was hunched over his clasped hands, brow furrowed in concentration, his lips moving to what Joe did not need to hear to know was a Latin prayer. Booker knelt beside him, sitting back on his heels, with his head bowed but occasionally stealing glances at Nicky to check that he was still there.

After almost nine-hundred years, Joe was well aware that this could take hours, as the degree to which Nicky demonstrated his faith fluctuated with the centuries. Not that Joe wasn’t just as guilty of the same. At least the basilica was beautiful, and he too took comfort in visiting a place so unchanged, one of the few steady rocks holding fast against the river of time.

But once Joe took a seat beside them, Booker shifted, glancing back at him, and surreptitiously rose from his knees. Nicky didn’t appear to notice, or have any awareness of the world around him at all, too lost in prayer.

“Hey, glad you’re here,” Booker whispered once Joe eased into his seat. “Listen, don’t freak out, but something happened before you got here.”

Joe stiffened and stole a quick glance at Nicky, still praying, still _there_ and safe, before scanning each entrance and exit of the basilica on instinct. “Yeah?”

“Might be nothing. But when we first came in, Nicky found the priest and said something to him.” Booker nodded towards the wooden confessional box on the far side of the aisle. “Like I said, it might have been nothing. He might have just been asking for a blessing. The whole thing was over in a minute, so it wasn't like I could stop him without causing a scene. But… I think once he’s done, we should get going.”

Joe nodded, taking this in as a wave of cold washed through him, a directionless sense of unease.

They waited, the minutes ticking by as Nicky continued his prayer. As time dragged, Booker’s eyebrows rose when Nicky didn’t shift or fidget even once where he knelt on the cold marble floor. Joe continued to scan the room. A worshipper left the confessional booth. Another entered. It was past noon, hours before evening mass, and the basilica was quiet except for those few worshippers and the occasional tourist.

Finally, Nicky’s eyes opened and he looked up. His shoulders relaxed as he straightened and at the sight of Joe he smiled, softly.

 _Dammit, Andy’s right, I am a sucker,_ Joe thought helplessly because he _knew_ he should hustle them out of there. He _knew_ how quickly things could go wrong, and yet when Nicky looked at him like that, all he could say was, “ _Do you need more time?_ ”

Booker shot Joe an incredulous stare behind Nicky's back, but Nicky only shook his head.

“ _No. There will be time enough for prayer later,”_ Nicky murmured. He took a deep breath and turned his gaze back to the altar. _“There is a garden outside the basilica. Will you walk with me?_ ”

Joe frowned uneasily. “ _We shouldn’t go too far. We need to leave soon._ ”

“ _I know. I have been counting the bells. Don’t worry, I won’t keep your physician waiting._ ”

Joe shared a look with Booker for confirmation, to which Booker shrugged and tapped his ear. Right, they had the earpiece if anything went wrong and Andy waited outside the doors, guarding the entrance. As long as he and Nicky were back in the next half hour, they could all grab a cab to the safe house with plenty of time to spare. At least outside the four of them could make a run for it if something went wrong, just grab Nicky and go.

“ _Alright,”_ Joe said and rose with Nicky.

The basilica's garden was lined with rows of stately orange trees on a cliffside overlooking the Tiber that offered a breathtaking view of the city. The dome of St. Peter was like a distant island in the hazy, early afternoon light, floating amidst a sea of bell towers, monuments, and plastered buildings bleached by the sun. Nicky paid none of these sights any mind. His steps matched Joe’s and kept a tranquil, ambling pace. A sort of peace had settled over him since entering Santa Sabina, evident in the eased tension in his shoulders. He stood straighter, carrying himself with an echo of the calm self-assurance of _Joe's_ Nicky.

“ _I spoke to the priest in the basilica,_ ” Nicky finally said. “ _Though his Latin was rusty. Did you know that is a scholar's language now, used only for reading and writing? He was unaccustomed to speaking._ ”

“ _I did,_ ” Joe said cautiously. A chill ran through him, pebbling his skin. They had not forbidden Nicky to speak to anyone, why would they? His Medieval Ligurian was all but incomprehensible, even to Italian speakers. But Latin… Joe had forgotten that his love spoke at least _one_ other language before he traveled to the Holy Land and this was the _one_ city in the world where the priest of a great basilica like the Santa Sabina would be expected to know it. “ _What did he say?”_

“ _That the monastery of Santa Sabina is no longer accepting new brothers, but there is one outside the city where I would be welcome._ ”

Joe froze. “ _What?_ ”

Nicky stopped a few steps in front of him, and when he turned there was sympathy in his eyes that said all Joe feared. “ _Perhaps we should sit down._ ”

Joe did not resist as Nicky put a tentative hand on his back to lead him towards one of the stone benches lining the garden path. Joe moved like an automaton to sit beside Nicky as guided. Peace radiated from Nicky’s posture and his voice was so painfully gentle as he said, _“When I awoke, I thought myself lost in this new world, without family, or means to support myself, but that was never true. I needed only to trust in God, for in His infinite mercy He will provide._

 _"Yusuf, you have been kind to me, but the Church was my family when I left my father’s house as a child, and when all else has vanished, the Church still stands, as it did before I was born and will be for centuries more. In a monastery, I could find my place even in a time I do not understand. I could learn this new language, support myself, and dedicate my life to good works. Surely this is what God intended when He took me from Jerusalem and brought me to Rome: to set me back on the path to His service._ ”

“ _No…no, Nicolò,_ ” Joe breathed and gripped Nicky’s arm, holding him as if he would disappear if he did not. _“God didn’t bring you here from Jerusalem, you left eight-hundred years ago, with_ me _._ We _are your family, not the Church! They took Quynh, they hunted and tortured us, over and over. You_ saw _the horrors. You_ saw _what they did to the Holy Land, to my people and to_ yours, _all for power and greed!_ ”

“ _Great men have always hungered for power and wealth, even those who serve the Church. The world is a broken, sinful place,_ ” Nicky said as if to soothe him. “ _There is nowhere any of us can go to escape that truth. But the brothers in the monasteries I have known are humble men. They seek only to do good works and to serve God, and that is all I have ever wanted, Yusuf. Now, I am free to do so once more. I could find peace there and work to cleanse my soul of the sins I committed in the Holy Land.”_

“ _You don’t_ need _them for that, Nicolò!”_ Joe’s grip tightened. “We _will take care of you. If you wish to do good, we will help you. Whatever you desire, we will find a way, just as we always_ have _.”_

Nicky shook his head and placed his hand over Joe’s on his arm, clasping it. “ _Perhaps it is not what I need, but it is what I want, Yusuf. Will you help me, or am I to be alone in this? I have promised you one more day, but I will understand if this is not something you can do. The priest has offered to help me reach the monastery today if this is too much to ask of you. Unless I am in truth your prisoner?_ ”

Joe’s lips parted and his eyes stung as he searched for words beyond the enormity that lay before him. Nicky, gone. Only yesterday they had woken in each other’s arms. He had known, in the abstract, that any day could be their last but not like this: no fighting, no anger or recrimination. Only gentle peace in Nicky's eyes as he walked away. “ _No_. _Please don’t go. Not today. I will take you there tomorrow if that is still what you want but give me…_ ” Joe’s breath hitched and he choked out, “ _…give me one more day. Please._ ”

“ _I swore an oath that I would._ ” Nicky took his hand from where it clasped Joe’s and he pressed it to Joe’s cheek, wiping away a tear with his thumb. “ _Do not weep, Yusuf. Eternity is long and God is good. I may not be the man you lost, but I think the Lord meant us to find one another. It is like destiny. We will have another chance._ ”

Words abandoned Yusuf. All that emerged was a coughing sob as he clasped his hand over Nicky’s on his cheek to hold it there, even for just a moment longer, if only to feel his touch. Nicky did not pull away, but neither did he take back his words, or offer anything but that sad smile, filled with understanding, and kindness, but worst of all resolve.

That was how Andy and Booker found them, hesitating just out of range at the sight of Joe’s tears, hope glimmering unmistakably for a moment until Nicky let his hand drop from Joe’s cheek to beckon them closer and, in Ligurian, explained what he had just told Joe.

“ _Absolutely not,_ ” Andy said, low and harsh. “ _We can’t leave you out in the open like that. Even if you are careful not to be injured where others will notice, they will see that you do not age_.”

Joe expected Nicky to balk at this, to show some of that Crusader ferocity, but he merely absorbed Andy’s words, as if the tranquility that emanated from the basilica had returned him, however briefly, to the man of peace Joe knew. “ _Ten years,”_ Nicky pronounced, then looked to each of them in turn for their acceptance. “ _Ten years to learn all I can of this new world and to dedicate myself to penance for my sins in the Holy Land. Then, we will meet again.”_ His gaze remained on Joe at the end, the look filled with the promise of another chance. “ _If by then, I still wish to continue my service to God, I will find another monastery where they do not know my face. Is that not fair?_ ”

Andy chewed the inside of her cheek, her eyes flint as she looked to Booker and then down to Joe. Joe’s tears had slowed, he could feel them cooling in his beard but he had no strength to wipe them away or cover his face to conceal them. He only looked up at Andy, wishing for a moment that she could be strong for him, not sure if he wanted that strength to mean she let Nicky go when he could not, or for her to refuse, and become the jailer he could never be.

“Fuck,” Andy spat, switching to English. “He can’t know where we are while he’s there, or he could be tied back to us. But before you say anything, Joe, I know, ok? I know we can’t just leave him and we need a way to contact him and for him to contact us if anything happens. Booker, would you be able to set something up?”

“Like a secure line? Sure, I can figure something out with burner phones,” Booker frowned. “It will be safer if we can switch the number up from time to time, send him a new one. Monks are allowed to get mail, right?”

“You’re just going to let him go?” Joe said dully. 

“You say the word and we’ll put him under house arrest, Joe,” Andy snapped but then her expression softened, drawing tight with real grief. “But I know you would never do that to him. Maybe this _is_ the best solution. Our life isn’t safe for someone who doesn’t understand how the world works. This way he’s off the grid and gets some time to figure things out at his own pace.”

“ _I_ would keep him safe,” Joe said and winced at the naked plea in his voice. “ _I_ would help him learn, no matter how long it takes.”

“I know, but are you asking me to talk him out of this or you?” Andy said. “He doesn’t know a language that _anyone_ speaks today, Joe. He can’t defend himself except with a _sword._ Hell, he can barely cross the street without having a breakdown. This is a _lot_ to fix, ten years might not be enough. Maybe this is how he finds his way back to us and at least he'll be safe, and happy, with a bunch of fanatics just like him."

“Nicky is smart, he could learn quickly if I teach him. I’ve seen him do it,” Joe countered. “I could take the time with him, up in Goussainville away from everyone. Andy, I can’t lose him to the fucking _Church_ , not again, not after what they did to us!”

Andy’s lips tightened and he knew, they both knew, that in her mind’s eye had flashed the pitiless sea. “But do you have him now, Joe?” she said softly. “How long did it take the first time for him to finally leave all of that shit behind?"

Fifty years. His mouth closed tight around the words but they were there. Fifty years before their days on the battlefield turned to nights in one another’s bed. Almost fifty more before they left the endless wars in the Holy Land behind.

Not long after his first death, Nicky learned his father’s new wife had given birth to a son. He sent word to Genova, to his family, of the death of their eldest living son. Later, once it was founded, he joined one of the first places where he could both dedicate himself to God and fight: a monastery, but this one of monastic knights, the Templars. He'd shed his old name and his old life, serving with the order across decades where he and Joe saw one another only in stolen moments, always on the other end of a sword. Until Nicky learned of a fresh wave of warriors coming from Europe, what would one day be called the Second Crusade, and unable to live that horror again, he’d left the Templars, and service to the Church, behind him for good.

“But ten _years_ , Andy?” Joe gave a pained laugh. “It hasn’t been ten _days_ , he isn’t even _gone,_ and I feel like I’m being flayed alive every time I reach for him and he doesn’t reach back.”

“Ten years is nothing to us,” Andy said. “You will survive it because you have to, to be there for him at the end when he comes back.”

Just like she waited for Quynh, knowing there was nothing else she could do. Knowing that if Quynh ever did return, she may never forgive Andromache for not finding her, but that would be nothing compared to the weight Andromache carried, not being able to forgive herself.

“I’m sorry, I’m being selfish.” Joe pressed his hand to his face, wiping the last of the moisture from his cheek and beard.

“It’s allowed,” Andy said, with a smile that was closer to a grimace. “At least you'll know he’s safe.” With that she turned back to Nicky and just for a moment, there was no sound Joe hated more than the language that had once been theirs alone. “ _We’ll take you to the monastery tomorrow and, after ten years, we will return for you._ ”

“ _Thank you,”_ Nicky nodded his acceptance, relief shining in his eyes. He glanced back towards the road. “ _Should we go? I think I’ve kept us here too long._ ”

“Yeah, no shit,” Booker muttered in English. “ _Christ_ , this is going to be an awkward cab ride back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, there is no strict soundtrack for this fic, but tonally a good song for this chapter and the next is "Achilles Come Down" by Gang of Youths.
> 
> **Thank you for reading! As much as I love sharing this little tale with the community I especially love to hear your thoughts! If you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**
> 
> ****


	10. Joe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back at the safe house.

The physician introduced herself only once she was inside the safe house as Dr. Adriana Guerra. She was on the younger side, perhaps in her thirties, wearing a nondescript business suit with practical flats, her black hair pulled into a ponytail. There was very little that was soft about her and yet, there was a gentleness to her brusque tone when she asked where to set up the large hard-shell trunk that she lugged behind, with the air of one who knows how to deliver bad news with honesty as well as empathy.

Booker was her contact, so he’d met Dr. Guerra at the door and stood by her shoulder now. He pointed out the middle of the parlor as the best place for her to work and meanwhile made light conversation that she replied to with the occasional, “Sì,” or “No.” Guerra took only casual note of the boarded-up windows and Nicky, sitting placidly on the chaise longue still speckled with his blood. Andy watched from the doorway to the far bedroom, arms folded and clearly ill at ease with having a stranger in their safe house.

Joe was on the bed he’d shared with Nicky the night before, in the dark. The door was open so he could keep an eye on the parlor along with the others, but it was a futile gesture. He could barely raise his head and had been staring sightlessly at the floor since they returned.

He knew he should be the one out there attending to Nicky as Dr. Guerra set to work, first taking a blood sample, with Booker moving in smoothly to assist with the bandage before she could see that the pinprick had already closed. Booker gave some vague story about a bad fall, subsequent memory issues, and scrambled speech for why Nicolò could not speak for himself. Dr. Guerra appeared to take this in stride, asking questions, jotting notes on a pad, until she clicked on a flashlight to check Nicky’s eyes.

Nicky hissed out a breath through his teeth and flinched back, cursing in Ligurian and shielding his eyes from the narrow beam of light. Joe jolted upright, a reflex of centuries at the sound of Nicky in pain, just in time to see Dr. Guerra frown.

“Hmm, maybe we should take those X-rays after all,” Dr. Guerra murmured to herself and reached into her trunk to begin assembling a portable X-ray machine of dull white plastic. She instructed Booker to take the heavy lead-lined protective smock out and drape it over Nicky, for all the difference it would make.

* * *

“I will have the results for you tomorrow,” Dr. Guerra said a half-hour later as she snapped the last binding shut on her trunk. “What is the best way to contact you?”

“With this.” Booker handed her one of the dozens of cheap burner phones he stocked up for their missions. “There’s one number listed in the contacts. I’ll relay the drop-off location for the second half of the payment once you’ve given us the results. Destroy the phone after.”

Dr. Guerra nodded, by all appearances unfazed by the instructions, then extended the handle of her case and rose to leave.

“Do you need help with the stairs?” Booker offered as he walked her to the door, but Guerra shook her head.

“It’s for the best if we are not seen together. I don’t want us linked in case your next job puts us on opposite sides.”

“A true professional.” Booker inclined his head with a polite smile. “Well then, Dr. Guerra, it’s been a pleasure. I hope for both our sakes that we never have reason to see each other again.”

Dr. Guerra returned the smile with a small, ironic one of her own and shook Booker’s hand. Then the door shut behind her.

“Do you think we can trust her?” Andy said as she emerged from the shadow of the hallway.

“She’s a free agent, Cuban. Runs an underground clinic for sex workers and others with no place to go over in San Basilico, then charges the mafia and any other scum out the nose to pay the bills. Word is she’s allowed to keep operating between rivals because she keeps everyone’s secrets.” Booker shrugged. “But, can _we_ trust her? For that much cash, I hope so. Mostly, I just had a good feeling.”

“We should leave tomorrow anyway,” Andy said. “First thing.”

Joe flinched. They’d already stayed in Rome too long. The traffickers they had taken down were only one link in a larger chain they’d been picking away at for almost a decade now, whenever they got a lead. But that kind of organization had deep roots, accomplices who weren’t on-site when the four of them took out the leaders and freed the women. Those accomplices would be looking for revenge and if they caught even a whiff of a mafia doctor doing a house call, it could mean they had a matter of hours, not days.

He knew this, but Nicky had promised one more day. And if they fled in the morning, that day would not be spent in the city, or in the privacy of one another’s company, but on the road. Once they dropped him off at the monastery, they’d have to cover their tracks, go dark for a while, maybe jump continents, and for the first time ever, they would do so without Nicky.

“You got it, boss,” Booker said. “I’m gonna head out in a bit, get us a car, maybe bring back some pizza from that place on the corner. Any requests?”

“You know us, Book,” Andy said. Her voice dropped low, low enough that Joe had to strain to hear her. “This is going to be a long night.”

“Too long and not long enough,” Booker muttered back. “I can’t believe we’re losing Nicky like this. Just yesterday…”

“I know.”

“I just never thought we'd lose only one of them, you know? It was _always_ both or neither. Jesus, poor Joe. What the fuck are we supposed to do?”

“For now, get us pizza, and maybe something extra. After tomorrow?” Andy sighed. “We do what we can to help Joe get through this. It’s what our Nicky would have wanted.”

* * *

He must have lapsed back into his trance, losing all sense of time as he stared at the floor, trying not to think about what was coming but unable to stop. There was a rustling from the kitchen that signaled Booker’s return, English mixing with soft-spoken Ligurian when Nicky asked some question Joe couldn’t make out and didn’t have the strength to crane for.

So when he heard approaching footsteps, too light to be Nicky or Booker, he didn’t need to look up to know. The mattress dipped under Andy’s weight as she sat down and wrapped her arm around his shoulder. At first, she didn’t speak, only laid her head against his.

Joe released a shuddering breath and reached up to grip Andy’s hand, clutching it tight.

“Hey,” Andy said finally, “I know it’s easier to stay in here, but you have to come out. Nicky asked about you, and Booker brought back a half-dozen bottles of shitty red wine that we’ll need help finishing before tomorrow.”

Joe chuckled faintly, “Oh, well, shitty red wine, how can I resist?”

“There’s some whiskey too that could double as lighter fluid,” Andy said. “I’d understand if that's more your flavor tonight.”

Joe snorted, but the amusement was short-lived and brought with it a stab of agony over what he’d be drinking to forget. “Nicky really asked about me?”

“He… knows that what he said hurt you. I told him it would be alright to check on you, but he didn’t want to intrude.”

Nicky, intruding? The thought was as nonsensical as saying his heart could intrude on his body. “How considerate.”

“Yeah, it’s the most dumb-fuck thing I’ve ever heard him say, and I've heard a lot over the years.”

Joe smiled at this or tried to, but now with the _ache_ of missing Nicky—the _thought_ of missing him so much more tomorrow, beyond anything he’d ever felt—sitting like a rock in his chest, his mouth wouldn’t obey. “Andy, I can’t go out there,” Joe whispered. “What would be the point? If this is really what he wants, I can’t stop him. Why should I torture myself going in there, seeing his face and knowing tomorrow he’ll be _gone_ when I can’t change anything?”

“Hmm,” Andy grunted thoughtfully and straightened, absorbing Joe’s words. “You’re right, maybe you can’t change anything, fanatics can be stubborn like that. _But,_ you could come out anyway because it beats sitting in the dark. Then we can have some of the best pizza in the world, drink shitty red wine, and in a few weeks when our Crusader friend in there is begging forgiveness for his hundredth meal of bread and water, wondering what he could be up to with the handsome pagan who got away, he’ll think back on this night and realize how royally he fucked up.”

Joe huffed a laugh despite himself, “I’m pretty sure monks don’t need to ask forgiveness for eating.”

“Who gives a fuck what they do?” Andy let her arm drop from his shoulder and stood, holding out her hand to help him up. “So, are you coming? Or do I have to send in Booker next?”

Joe hesitated. The dark was tempting. In the dark, he could lick his wounds in peace and begin the slow, fruitless process of steeling himself against a decade or more without Nicky by his side. But with Andy standing over him, one eyebrow arched, her hand extended to draw him out, just sitting there alone was beginning to feel less like a noble retreat and more like a self-pitying sulk.

Nicky was still out there, confused, alone, barely thirty years old in his own mind, in a world that was all but unrecognizable from the one he knew, and Joe was asking him to deny the only family he could remember that survived to this era.

Maybe Andy was right that Nicky could be shown another way, if only Joe summoned the courage to go out there and offer him one, instead of hiding away with his pain. And… maybe some of his despair over Nicolò’s decision to join a monastery was misplaced because he had, on instinct, viewed Nicky’s choice as carrying the same measured thoughtfulness and surety of the Nicky he knew, who had a millennium to know himself and his desires. Who, if he one day decided to leave Joe to return to the Church, would do so with the experience and wisdom of an immortal and never look back.

But Nicky right now was a young man in his own mind, one who had joined an army to find forgiveness, who even without immortality would have years ahead of him to seek out what he truly wanted from life. Yes, perhaps Nicky couldn’t be easily swayed from his current path, but a decade was a small price to pay for him to find himself in this new era on his own terms. He could very well be seeking comfort in the arms of the Church not because he saw it as some fixed, irrefutable destiny, but because there was nothing else left that was familiar, in the same way that Nicky had weathered his first half-century of immortality with the Templars. Nicky had been many things before they left the Holy Land together: a priest, a son, a soldier of Christ, a warrior-monk, a brigand, a vassal, and a leader of men. It was only after he had been all of those things that he became Joe’s, and Joe had become Nicky’s.

This time apart would not be forever. It might not even be ten years if he showed Nicky there was something to come home to. Something that wasn’t the cold comfort of marble saints and institutions that never changed unless forced to by the living world. And even if nothing got through to Nicky, it would be foolishness, pettiness, for Joe to waste the little time together they had left.

“I’m being dramatic, aren’t I?” Joe murmured and took Andy’s hand.

“Not really,” Andy said. Her bicep flexed as she dragged him to his feet. “Everything about this sucks, Joe, there’s no way around it. I’m just here to make sure you don’t do something you’ll regret.”

“But I can sulk tomorrow?” Joe said wryly.

“The whole way back to Goussainville.” Andy squeezed his hand. “My treat.”

* * *

Booker and Nicky were seated across from one another at the round wooden dining table when Joe and Andy arrived from the bedroom. A glass of red wine filled to the brim sat before each of them, which could only mean Booker had taken it upon himself to play host tonight. Andy took the chair to Booker’s right, filling her own glass to match, then settled back and took a long sip with every sign that she needed it.

Nicky did not look up at their approach. He was too busy biting into a slice of pizza, his eyes shut in an expression of bliss.

“I can’t believe he likes pizza," Booker marveled. "It’s so cliché I almost want to tell him to knock it off. You know, for Italy's sake." He glanced up at Joe, gesturing towards the spread that covered the table in invitation.

A variety of flavors sat in an open box on the dining room table, as if Booker had gone to the local pizzeria and just asked for a few slices of everything. The source of Nicky’s current ecstasy, however, was one of the least exciting of the bunch: plain cheese without sauce and, from the smell of it, only a dash of olive oil and garlic. Booker followed Joe’s questioning look and leaned in conspiratorially. “I had a hunch that our knight-errant here might prefer something a little more plain than the, euh, exotic heights of frozen lasagna we’ve been feeding him. God knows, I rarely had anything more exciting than bread and cheese before I met all of you.”

“And after all that effort I put into expanding his horizons,” Joe lamented. Nicolò’s family had been prosperous, but even so, meat was reserved for feast days and fresh fruits and vegetables could only be had in their proper season. And that barely covered the fact that, in Nicky's mind, he’d just spent three years living on military rations and starving more often than not, what with the Frankish army’s reliance on living off the land in hostile territory they barely understood. A simple dish of bread, melted cheese, and garlic might be the first meal he’d had in years that tasted of home. “Well, at least it’s something he can eat without a knife.”

Nicky’s eyes opened and he jerked back, swallowing roughly and wiping the back of his hand over his mouth as he only then seemed to realize Joe was there. A flush spread over his cheeks. He took a hasty sip of wine and coughed, rasping, “ _You’re back.”_

Joe hesitated, his hand gripping the back of the chair he was about to pull out to sit beside Nicky. “ _Would you prefer I remove myself?_ ”

“ _No!”_ Nicky stood half out of his chair in alarm and gestured for Joe to sit, only resuming his own seat when Joe cautiously acquiesced. “ _I was only concerned. I didn’t think…”_

Nicky broke off mid-word, looking at Joe wide-eyed with what might have been guilt. The moment stretched until Booker took pity. “ _He realized that without you here, he only has me and Andy for company. I would miss you too, Joe.”_ Booker winked.

“Mille grazie, Booker _,_ _you always know how to make me feel wanted,_ ” Joe snorted. A case of wine sat on the floor in the corner with five more bottles peeking out, in addition to the one on the table. “ _Is there a reason we have enough wine for a small army?_ ”

Booker’s gaze flickered over to Nicky and back. He switched to English, “I only had cash with me and I figured quantity mattered more than quality on a night like this. Did Andy tell you there’s whiskey too? Just say the word and I’ll break it out.” He then switched back to measured Italian, “ _I was hoping to give our friend here a proper send-off before he dedicates himself to God. I don’t expect he’ll be having wine like this any time soon._ ”

Nicky startled, “ _Why wouldn’t there be wine at the monastery?”_

Booker shot Joe a look that might as well have shouted, _oh boy, here we go._ “ _Oh, some monasteries allow wine, to be sure, but only in moderation, maybe a glass with dinner. Most of them are strict these days in allowing only water._ ”

“ _But why?”_ Nicky’s lips parted in utter bafflement. “ _What’s wrong with wine? Almost all of the monasteries I know have their own vineyards._ ”

“ _Clean water has become very common now, so many see wine as sinful and forbid it,_ ” Booker said innocently.

“Booker, are you trying to scare him away from the Church on my behalf?” Joe sighed.

“Just telling it like it is, my friend,” Booker replied. He ticked off on his fingers, “Wine, feasting, mistresses, the occasional sodomy, all used to be expected vices for those fat cats in the clergy, but Europe has grown so _prudish_ in the last century. Nicolò here might not be prepared for the sort of self-denial that the Church expects of a man of the cloth these days.”

Joe scoffed, “I know Nicky, you’re not going to change his mind with horror stories about self-denial. All his childhood heroes were martyrs.”

“You didn’t know Nicky _well_ until he was eighty, even if he was still in the body of a young Adonis,” Booker countered. “This man is thirty and until yesterday he was a soldier. Do you really expect me to believe that he never took a whore in Constantinople, or had a roll in the hay with a fellow chevalier? Pfff, not likely. Not in any army I’ve seen.”

It was Nicky, so the thought alone was enough to send a stab of heat through his veins at the image of his beloved flushed and wild-eyed with desire, sprawled out in a hayloft somewhere on the road to Jerusalem. Joe pinched the bridge of his nose, but it was as much to block Nicky from his sight as to signal his exasperation with where Booker was taking this conversation. He knew if he looked at Nicky now, he would not be able to keep the thought from burning in his eyes, nor the desire to bend him back with a filthy open-mouthed kiss and drag him to their bedroom for the evening they’d promised one another just yesterday.

“Even if he did, what’s your point?” Joe sighed and hoped the flush didn’t show on his cheeks.

“I’m just saying, I know you’ve seen your fair share of the Church over the years, but I was _raised_ with it. In my day, it used to be that a man could do whatever he wanted even if he was clergy, and only the grunts and the fanatics needed to seriously practice the hard parts, but that’s mostly gone now if you’re not high up.”

“Hmm, and I should show Nicky a good time tonight so in a few weeks when he’s on a steady diet of bread and water at the monastery he’ll look back and wish he was drinking wine with us instead?” Joe retorted.

Booker leaned back in his chair and shot Andy an affronted glare. “Shit, boss, you already used that line on him? I thought we were going to build to that!”

“I needed to break out the big guns early,” Andy shrugged. Beside her, Nicky seemed torn between annoyance at yet another conversation he couldn’t follow and welcoming the chance to wolf down his meal without interruption, as if expecting the pizza would be taken away if he didn’t eat quickly enough.

“Guys, I appreciate the effort, I really do,” Joe said and let his hand fall from his face. “But I’m going to lose my mind if we spend all night talking about… where Nicky’s going tomorrow. Can we please just eat in peace and worry about it later?”

Andy and Booker held one another’s gaze then Andy reluctantly nodded. Booker sighed, slouching down in his chair, then said, “Fine. Are you going to want some wine with dinner or not?”

“Oh, no fucking question,” Joe said and grabbed one of the glasses from the middle of the table to plunk it down in front of Booker, who offered a chivalrous nod and uncorked the bottle in one well-practiced motion. As he poured, Joe turned to Nicky, “ _I’m sorry about that. Usually you complain sooner when you don’t understand.”_

Nicky froze midway to reaching for a third piece, hesitated, then took it anyway and set it on his plate. “ _It was not my place._ ”

Joe raised an eyebrow. “ _That hasn’t stopped you before._ ”

“ _I think… I have caused you enough difficulty for today,_ ” Nicky murmured without looking up from his food. “ _We will see what tomorrow brings_.”

“ _Whether I will break my word, you mean?_ ” Joe said.

Nicky nodded. “ _But I don’t think you will, and that is why I am truly sorry, Yusuf._ ”

“ _But not sorry enough to change your mind._ ”

“ _No.”_

Joe grimaced but said nothing to that. Instead, he surveyed the open boxes for his own pizza, before selecting a _Caprese_ -style slice, figuring Nicky wouldn't be interested in anything made with the dreaded tomatoes. After a few bites, though, the silence dragged and he realized the problem hanging over the table like a cloud.

What could they possibly talk about that wouldn’t lead inevitably to dwelling on the next day? Nicky was _here_ , now, and he knew intellectually that he should make the most of this time together, but whenever Joe looked at his love, he wanted to scream, to shake him, to beg to understand how this was _happening_. He searched his mind for something, anything, that wouldn’t circle back inevitably to Nicky’s choice, and was surprised when Nicky was the one who broke the silence.

“ _So…why_ did _the three of you come to Rome?_ ” Nicky said.

 _“The four of us,”_ Andy corrected. _“You came too, Nicolò. We were hunting slavers who were selling their captives to brothels. We had just freed the women and killed their captors when you took your injury.”_

Nicky appeared to mull over this, nodding thoughtfully to himself. “ _Then it is noble work you do, for it is a vile trade. On what lord’s behalf do you perform this labor?_ ”

“ _We serve no lord but ourselves,”_ Andy said. “ _Though we have taken contracts from the powerful if we agree with their cause._ ”

“ _Ah, so you are mercenaries!_ ” Nicky’s eyebrows rose in understanding but his mouth turned down at the corners a moment later in distaste. “ _But if you serve no lord and sell your sword for gold, how can you be sure that your cause is just?_ ”

“ _We can’t always know,_ ” Joe interjected. “ _All we can do is save lives, help people, and have faith that we’re putting some good in the world._ ”

It was strange, saying these words to Nicky, who had been the first to voice these musings in such terms centuries ago. What were they to do with immortality? What were they kept alive to achieve? Nicky’s sense of destiny had required an answer, some salvation to work towards. Joe had been less certain of a fixed purpose, especially as the years lengthened into decades, then centuries, and the world changed its mind from moment to moment on what was right.

Andy and Nicky shared a similar view of their purpose in the world, but from opposite ends of the spectrum. He believed their duty was to do good in service to God. She believed their duty was to do good because there was no god to serve. She and Quynh had traveled together for so long by the time Joe and Nicky met them that they could never get a straight answer on whose idea it had been first that as immortals they were meant to be an answer, however small, to injustice in the world. Nicky and Joe had reached a similar conclusion on their own and so it was not difficult for the four of them to strike a balance, an understanding of the jobs they took, those they refused, and when to go rogue entirely. By the time Booker joined, the cycle of rotating between one another's chosen causes was a reflex, simply the way things were in how they worked to bring good to the world.

“ _Tell me, then._ ” Nicky pushed his plate to the side, suddenly intrigued. His hands settled around the stem of his glass and he leaned forward, his gaze intent on Joe. “ _Tell me how you can be so certain of your cause when you have no lord or priest to show you the righteous path. Tell me of the lives you have saved, of the people you have helped with this immortal gift of yours.”_

Out of the corner of his eye, Joe saw Booker’s face crease into a triumphant grin that he quickly hid in his wine glass. Andy said nothing, only watched, but Joe had known her too long not to note the hint of smugness in how her eyebrows rose at Nicky’s request. It was a look she always got when a mark landed right where she wanted.

“ _Alright,_ ” Joe sighed, realizing from their sly silence that Andy and Booker expected _him_ to play Scheherazade. “ _Where would you like to start?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations**  
>  Sì - (Italian) Yes  
> Mille grazie - (Italian) many thanks (lit. a thousand thanks)
> 
> **Thank you for reading! As much as I love sharing this little tale with the community I especially love to hear your thoughts! If you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	11. Nicolò

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yusuf plays Scheherazade.

Yusuf had a beautiful voice.

The thought crept into Nicolò’s head somewhere near the bottom of the second bottle of wine. The four of them were no longer in the kitchen, but in the central room of the house, Andromache and Booker were on two plush chairs on the far side of a low center table, while he and Yusuf reclined across from them, sharing a long cushioned seat.

What the hour was now, he couldn’t say. He’d stopped listening for the bells and could not see the sky with the house’s boarded-up windows. But his body could feel that it was late and Yusuf had been talking for hours, stopping only to allow Andromache or Booker to pick up a tale that they knew better, so he could enjoy his own glass of wine.

Nicolò wasn’t sure when he’d gone from sitting at the far end of the seat to half-reclining, one hand cradling the side of his head while the other held his wine glass, close enough to Yusuf to reach out and touch him. Perhaps it was during a tale of adventure on the sea when the mercenaries had commandeered their own ship. Yusuf made no comment on his sudden closeness, but his dark eyes always seemed to find Nicolò and see to the heart of him whenever they met.

Yusuf had just finished the latest story, one of a journey across something called the Silk Road to a land so far east that they’d never heard of Jesus Christ. Yusuf was just reaching down to the low table between their seats to retrieve his glass when Booker stood and stretched his arms over his head until his spine popped. “Well, that’s it for me, I think.”

Booker glanced down Andromache, raising one eyebrow, and after whatever silent exchanges passed between them, she too unfolded from her seat with surprising steadiness. Booker had beat out the rest of them in sheer quantity of wine, but Andromache had nearly matched him, yet she barely swayed. “Don’t worry about packing up tomorrow, Joe. We’ve got it.”

Yusuf frowned, his gaze flicking to Nicolò and back, but if he had any protest he kept it to himself, only nodded. “Fine, fine. I’ll see you two in the morning. Thank you.”

Then the two padded back to their own shared room, leaving Nicolò and Yusuf alone.

“Our day has been long, would you like to rest as well?” Yusuf inquired. He reoriented in his seat to face Nicolò, leaning with one elbow against the back.

“No. I’m not tired,” Nicolò said. Booker had left a half-finished bottle at the center of the table and Nicky took the opportunity to fill his cup. The wine was unwatered and remarkably free of any dregs or sediment, with a deeper flavor than he was accustomed to. He’d kept his cup full throughout the night, as much to drink as to have something to do with his hands while Yusuf spoke, somewhere to look that was not so obviously watching the other man, committing the sight of him to memory to carry with him for the next ten years of strict living. Nicolò’s cheeks were warm and his body languid from a night of good food and drink, for the first time since he arrived in this place, though in truth it was probably longer. Since Constantinople, or even before the harsh road to the Holy Land. “I would like to hear another tale.”

Yusuf pulled back a little, eyebrows rising in surprise, but then seemed pleased. His manner was odd at times, one moment at perfect ease in Nicolò’s presence, the next seeming to catch himself like a sleeper at the edge of dreaming and retreat into himself. “Very well, what would you like to hear?”

“You’ve told many tales of the four of you, but what about the two of us?” Nicolò said. Yusuf’s hand went still where he’d been swirling his wine in the glass. “Tell me of how we first met.”

“You were there.” Yusuf’s gaze flickered down, possibly to Nicolò’s hands, perhaps to his lips, and back up.

Nicolò shook his head. “I saw only a few moments on the battlefield. What about after that, or before? Did you ever see me from the walls, as I saw you?” Yusuf chuckled at that. “Have I said something funny?”

“It’s just been many years since the first time you asked me that. Hmm, did I notice _you_ from the wall?” Yusuf hummed thoughtfully to himself, looking up to the ceiling as if expecting to find the memory there. “It might not surprise you to hear that I had other matters on my mind during the siege. Most of our army returned to Cairo after we drove the Turks from Jerusalem. I was one of the few officers left behind to support General Iftikhār, and our days were consumed with training merchants and refugees to man the walls. But, now that you mention it…”

There was a sparkle of mischief in Yusuf’s eyes, the sly look of the chance to tell a favorite joke, “There _might_ have been one soldier who caught my eye. He kept wandering away from his fellows towards the walls, to the very edge of our range. I thought at first he had gone mad from heatstroke, or perhaps that he was praying. You Franks were always praying in the strangest ways, like those damned parades around the walls at all hours. On any other day, I would have signaled one of my archers to shoot him, but we were under orders to preserve our arrows for the next assault. A good thing for him. I remember... that he was fair, with unusually light eyes, and that he was either very brave or very stupid.”

Nicolò snorted and Yusuf flashed him a grin before continuing. “Of course, I prayed every day that the Franks would not breach the walls. _But_ , if they did, a part of me I could not explain hoped I would get the chance to face this very brave or very stupid man, and find out which it was.”

“And what did you find when you did?” Nicolò murmured.

Yusuf paused and his hand moved as if unconsciously to brush over his heart. “I found that he was very brave,” he said. “At the same moment I found death.” Yusuf shook himself. “We killed each other three times during the battle, fighting until long after night fell.”

Nicolò saw in his mind the violet shadows that stretched over the dry land outside Jerusalem at nightfall. How the sound of battle would have faded behind them. They were meant only for each other, he knew this in his soul. If the man on the walls had not died by his hand he would have fought him, again and again, until there was some ending, fixating on his death with the sort of mad obsession that afflicted men during battle, when they were dying of heat and thirst. “Why did we stop?”

“I don’t know,” Yusuf said. He corrected himself, “I don’t know why _you_ stopped, I know that for me… at first it was frustration. I didn’t understand why _nothing_ worked to kill you, why this battle wouldn’t end or why I wasn’t exhausted—not in the way I should be—not with the wounds I had taken. And no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop you. I couldn’t make you stop… _moving_. It was infuriating.” Yusuf chuckled. “You were like a thorn I couldn’t rip out of my own flesh no matter how hard I tried. And then… it was just us. I remember the moon that night, thin as a sickle, almost gone. There were fires burning in the city and all the men around us lay dead. There was no sound, no cries. All I could hear was you, breathing. Like we were the only people left in the world. For a moment we just… stood there, staring at each other. Then you asked my name.”

Nicolò’s chest felt tight, seeing Jerusalem under the waning moon. The man on the wall across from him, shadowed by fire and night, his kingly robes soiled with blood, and only two of them alone in a field of the dead, unable to die. “Did you answer?”

“Of course, what else could I do? I was too tired to think straight by then. You answered with your name. I remember your accent was difficult to understand, but also that I was surprised at how much you knew, enough to tell me to go. You said your people had taken the city and would not show mercy if they found me.”

Nicolò stopped breathing, chills racing over his skin to hear the future, his future, spoken as if by a sorcerer, by the man he’d thought it was his destiny to kill. “They would not have. You would have been wise to flee.”

“Probably, but first I told you to go fuck yourself. There were civilians in the city, innocents. If you weren’t going to kill me, I had to get back to protect them. But before I could take one step towards the city, you grabbed me, shoved me back, and said… I think you were _trying_ to say, ‘That was not the deal,’ but it was in the merchant’s tongue. You used a word for closing a trade, so at first, I didn’t understand your meaning and tried to push past you. You drew your sword and said it again, and then I understood.

“You were offering me mercy, but only enough to let me go, not to return to the fighting. If I tried, you would kill me again, and again, as many times as it took until one side or the other tore us apart.

“Then you shoved me again, shouted at me to go, and only then I saw that you were weeping. I didn’t understand why. Your army had won the day and taken the prize you’d traveled so far to claim. But I was too exhausted to care, or to continue our fight, and someone needed to get word to our forces in Ascalon, so... I ran. But when I looked back, just the one time to make sure you weren’t following me, I saw that you were still there, staring at the flames.”

Nicolò’s skin felt numb and his knuckles had gone white clenching around the fabric of the seat. He stared at nothing, no longer seeing Yusuf, but a city in flames. His people had burned _Jerusalem_ , those men who had stood to either side of him at mass and in battle. He had not wanted to believe them capable but he had _known_. Between the thirst and the heat and Jerusalem so close they had, one by one, gone mad. The stench of it hung in the air as if they were a pack of rabid dogs, and he had begged God to show His mercy, to prove to Nicolò that he was wrong to doubt, and their holy mission would be enough to erase the weaknesses of men.

It had not been enough.

“Nicolò.” He started as a warm hand cupped his cheek and brushed the tears away and there was Yusuf, whole and uninjured, wide-eyed with concern. “My love, do not weep. It was centuries ago and the wounds are long forgotten or healed.”

“Tell that to Andromache.”

Yusuf flinched and he looked away to release a slow breath. “And Booker was right that it was not your fault. Even if it was, I saw the penance you performed after, how you helped the helpless and protected the weak with your own life to make amends.”

“But that was _him_ , the man you loved,” Nicolò hissed. “I have done no such penance. Don't you see? That's _why_ I must go tomorrow.”

“It _was_ you. Nicolò, I know all of this must sound impossible, but I _know_ of the goodness that exists within you,” Yusuf said, jamming his finger against Nicolò’s chest. “I see it even now in your decision to dedicate your life again to God, but it _destroys_ me to watch you return to those who brought our family so much misery because I know you don’t need _them_ to do what is right! _”_

The grief was stark on Yusuf’s face just as it had been when he retreated to the bedroom to hide his tears, though Nicolò could hear that he was weeping.

Why? Incomprehensible to think of the man in shining red and gold atop Jerusalem’s walls feeling such pain at Nicolò’s loss. They were _enemies_. God Himself had set them in opposition to one another, there shouldn’t be anything they _could_ offer one another except death.

Yet Yusuf mourned. He mourned more deeply than had Alessandro at the prospect of their parting, buoyed as Nicolò’s lover had been by the promise of his own parish. He mourned as Nicolò’s own family had not when he left for the Holy Land, with his mother dead and his father’s slip of a new wife watching, dark-eyed and silent, already swelling with their child as Nicolò rode away. Always Nicolò had been one of many: one of his father’s sons, one of the priests of his seminary, one of many soldiers of Christ who answered the Pope's call, knowing it was only thanks to God’s mercy that he had not died like thousands of other pilgrims along the road to Jerusalem.

Never before had he felt so… singular. Yusuf mourned the loss of _him_ , Nicolò, with despair greater than one who had just learned of his own death sentence, not of the mere ten-year exile of an enemy.

“But how did this happen?” Nicolò said, gesturing between himself and Yusuf, sitting so close together now that their knees touched. “Why would you ever wish to see me again, a sinner who brought war to your people? How were we not enemies?”

“Not enemies?” Yusuf guffawed and hastily covered his mouth as if amused in spite of the solemn mood that had descended at hearing something so ridiculous. “Oh, we were enemies for many, _many_ years before we were lovers, _habibi_. But _how_ did that occur? Hmm, I suppose it could best be said that it was as if… that destiny that brought us together was not content until we stayed there. I would ride out against the Franks and you would be there. Our forces would set out to reclaim another city entirely, yet somehow you were there as if you _knew_ where I would be! Like that time I was sent into Jaffa as a spy to study the Frankish defenses, disguised as a merchant, and I had no sooner set up my stall than you were _there,_ and you killed me on the spot. It would have been amusing if it wasn’t so infuriating. I could not be _rid_ of you!”

Nicolò snorted as he tried to imagine these moments. His Saracen from the wall, but in the years after Jerusalem was reclaimed, not only across from him on the battlefield, but a face in the crowd, a merchant selling wares—the last was impossible for him to picture. _This_ man wearing a humble trader’s robes, trying to go unnoticed when he blazed like the sun? He too had to bite back a laugh at the image. “Like a cat and mouse.”

“Not like any mouse I’d ever seen,” Yusuf grumbled. But a little of the sparkle had returned to his eye, the crow’s feet at the corner deepening in amusement instead of grief. Nicolò found himself leaning forward, closing the gap as he had on the battlefield, but now just for the desire to be closer, to feel the warmth coming from Yusuf. “Or any cat. More like a hunting dog running a stag to exhaustion. I loathed the sight of you.”

The words would sting if Yusuf were not so carefree with them, as if relating a favorite joke. _How could I loathe you?_ underlay those words. _Nothing could be more impossible_. And bit by bit, some of the tension left Nicolò, the image of Jerusalem burning retreated, not forgotten, only put gently to the side until he could mourn, and repent those sins fully in their own time. Tomorrow there would be time enough for prayer, and for years after that.

“What changed?” he asked, the final piece of the puzzle that began when he woke up in this house, in this time, with this man’s arms wrapped around him, holding Nicolò as if he would die rather than be parted.

“Time,” Yusuf said. He seemed to taste the word, then nodded to himself repeating, “Time. When we were forty, it was easy to fight the same wars, to continue our lives as they had been. When we were fifty, we felt blessed with both the wisdom of our age and the strength of young men, which only made us fight harder, feeling as if it was our purpose to do so with this gift.

“But then we were sixty, Nicolò, then seventy, and then eighty. One by one, our fellows dropped around us, soldiers we’d fought with side by side since we were young men. Yet to all appearances, _we_ were still young men. It was… alienating. Before long it wasn’t just our fellow soldiers who aged around us, it was their children. Then it was cities that changed. Empires rose and fell and yet we were still there, fighting each other. For what? Every year it became harder to remember why it mattered that this king or that lord ruled a city, so long as its people were well treated. And throughout it all… you were there. My only constant.

“Even so, it took us years to realize this, before we spoke without once drawing our swords. An accident, our forces were camped on either side of the same river and somehow we had both gone to bathe at the same time, damn you. Your sword lay on the bank, we could have resumed our fight early, but I was just so… tired. I would have been fifty-six had we continued to age and I felt every year of it that day, though there was no mark of time on either of us.

“As I stood there I remembered the old men I had seen at the Great Mosque in Mahdia when I was a child. Veterans who would sit together in the shade and speak of battles long forgotten, and I think it struck me then that you were the only living person I knew who was there, at Jerusalem. So, I asked how you had been these past years. I don’t know which of us was more surprised when you answered. We spoke for an hour at least, catching up on one another’s lives, reminiscing on old battles. I learned your mother’s name that day and how you sent word back to Genova of your death when you learned that your father’s new wife had given birth to a son. I told you of Mahdia and the strange road that brought me from there to Jerusalem. When we parted, I felt lighter than I had in years, as if I had gone to one of your Christian confessions. And the next day, when we killed each other on the battlefield, it almost felt like a joke, like a secret only the two of us in the whole world shared.” Yusuf grinned at the thought, his eyes distant but fond. When he refocused on Nicolò, he shrugged.

“That was the beginning. After, I was not so angry when I saw you again on the battlefield, even if we did still kill each other from time to time, more out of nostalgia than anything else, I think. Just to have those few moments after when we healed side by side, still refusing to admit that we enjoyed even the silence of each other’s company as our guts patched themselves back together. The insults began to feel more teasing than hateful, and eventually, the conversation was more pleasant, more familiar, than any I knew with my own men. By the time we were in our eighties, I realized I looked forward to the next time destiny would bring us together more than I cared about what the next battle was _for,_ and that feeling only grew until one day… you were gone.”

Nicolò started. He’d been studying Yusuf, tracing his features and trying to imagine what this man would look like at fifty, or sixty. Distinguished, most likely, he could imagine the gray wings that might appear at his temples, the grave dignity that might deepen the lines of his face, or the kindness in the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. “Obviously I am here,” Nicolò scoffed, “so he could not have vanished forever.”

“No, but I was worried,” Yusuf said. “And in that moment, I saw how much had changed that I was worried. I couldn’t think of the last time I’d been so concerned for _any_ other person. My elder brothers had long since found their own fortunes and passed away, while my remaining sisters were happily married and living out comfortable old age with their grandchildren. My parents were long dead.

“The only person who sparked in me… anything, any concern at all for their safety was you, the Frank who killed me. Everything else seemed pointless, like the color had drained from the world. I’d thought it was the battlefield that gave me something to live for, but I realized that it was the man who I hoped to see there that brought life to my world now. Soon after that, I learned the news from Christian kingdoms: Edessa had fallen to the Turks, and the Pope had called a second invasion. There would be another wave of Franks coming to the Holy Land.”

Nicolò sucked in a breath. “Another holy war? But, why?”

“To defend Jerusalem, of course. The princes of Christendom had made the cities of the Holy Land into their own kingdoms, but earthly matters began to consume their purpose almost immediately: trade, politics, territory. I knew that the constant warfare and greed of those lords was a point of frustration for you, though you rarely discussed such matters with me,” Yusuf’s cheeks flushed slightly and he rubbed a hand over his mouth, leaving Nicolò to wonder what they _had_ spoken about. “It was about the time anyway when I would need to fake my death and find another garrison to serve under a new name to avoid suspicion. So instead when I left, I took a job protecting a merchant caravan that would allow me to get into Jerusalem unnoticed to look for you. Once there, I learned that you had left the city, as well as the knightly order you’d served. No one knew where you had gone. I almost gave up my search then and there.”

“I thought you were trying to rescue him?” Nicolò said dryly.

“ _Rescue_ wasn’t exactly high on the list of what I was expecting to do if I found you,” Yusuf chuckled. “In truth, I assumed you had grown tired of the Holy Land and returned to Genova. I had not yet decided what I would do if that were true, whether I would follow you there or face a long immortality alone, without my bothersome Frankish knight. Then I heard a rumor of a wild man living outside Jerusalem. An angel, some said, others believed he was a djinn. He protected travelers on the road, pilgrims, regardless of whether they were Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. The rumors described his armor as bearing an old design, which may have fed the belief that he was the ghost of a fallen Christian knight from the Siege of Jerusalem. He certainly looked like something that had been dead for several weeks.”

Nicolò shot Yusuf a mocking glare _,_ which only served to deepen the laugh lines at the corner of his eyes. “It was him, wasn’t it.”

“It was,” Yusuf laughed. “Just as _terrible_ at living off the land then as when you arrived with the Franks. It was pathetic. I couldn’t just leave you there. So I told you I had come to bring you home with me and that if you did not come peacefully, I would kill you and keep killing you long enough to drag you back if necessary.”

Nicolò snickered. “A hunting dog, you said, but it sounds like this man was more a stray you picked up off the street.”

“A stray would have smelled more pleasant, and probably been easier to bathe. _Allah_ , you reeked.”

“And that was the end of it?” Nicolò said curiously. “You two were lovers after that?”

Yusuf flushed, looking suddenly chagrined and rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. “Mmm, not after that, no. That started… quite a bit earlier, before we really began… speaking,” Nicolò stared, “…or stopped killing each other.”

“ _Madre di Dio_ …” Nicolò muttered and gave Yusuf a sidelong look. He at least had the grace to look abashed.

“If it’s any consolation, it _is_ when we stopped killing each other,” Yusuf said and added under his breath, “at least on purpose.”

“But you have been together since?” Nicolò said, “For over eight hundred years? It seems impossible to love for so long.” _To be loved for so long, to be so singular to another person and to love them in return, for centuries,_ his breath hitched at the thought, accompanied by a tightening in his chest that was nothing like the fear from earlier. Longing. To have such certainty of one’s place in the world, and for that place to be by another’s side. The thought was… dizzying.

“We were lucky,” Yusuf murmured. “This gift, this… immortality, or whatever you want to call it, can so easily be a curse. Time takes everything from us: our homes, our families, eventually our entire world. But it gave us each other. Sometimes… I think about how we would have died that day if not for this, never knowing one another, or what we could have, and it is all I can do when I pray to thank Allah that we lived and that we found each other. Everything I have lost because of this life I would give a thousand times over again if it meant you were there. Eight hundred years? It’s not nearly enough. A thousand more, or ten thousand, could not encompass all the lifetimes I wish to share with you.”

Yusuf paused and that stricken look returned, anguish in how his brow drew together, as he glanced at Nicolò. The mourning husband at the grave. “This is usually when you tell me I’m an incurable romantic and I’m embarrassing everyone around us.”

“There is no one else here,” Nicolò said quickly. He put a hand on Yusuf’s arm, not sure if he wanted to hold him in place or offer comfort. “You don’t have to stop.”

“I have been talking all night,” Yusuf smiled sadly. “Telling tales that mean… nothing to you, like those old soldiers in Mahdia, rattling on about battles you never saw and people you never met. You have been unbelievably patient with me.”

“It is not patience, Yusuf,” Nicolò protested. “Perhaps those tales are your past, but they are _my_ future. In them, I hear what I dare not believe, that… that I could find forgiveness. That my life does not end at the gates of Jerusalem. That there is _hope_ for my soul.” _That there is you. An enemy, a pagan, who says I am worthy of salvation and that ten thousand years would not be enough time for the love we will share._ “To hear such wonders does not require patience, not at all.”

Yusuf’s eyes searched Nicolò’s face. “This is so strange. I don’t… know if I can fully express how strange. If your face was different somehow, this would be easier, but when I look at you, I see the man I woke up next to for over eight hundred years. Except you really aren’t, are you? All of that is in front of you. You have no idea of the miracle you will become.”

Nicolò kissed him.

Yusuf froze under his lips, only for a breath, then he was kissing back, devouring Nicolò’s mouth. Nicolò’s breath punched out of him in a moan, a thrill racing straight from his lips to his loins, as Yusuf’s tongue traced his lips then plundered his mouth. Yusuf had hands that were warm against his skin as Yusuf’s fingertips brushed his cheeks and then gently cradled his face.

He’d never been kissed like this. His mind went white, desire scorching his skin as Yusuf tasted him, neither too demanding nor too soft, matching him in each push as if he could read Nicolò’s thoughts before he knew them himself. The muscles in his lower belly tightened, shivered, and his hands found Yusuf’s waist. He lost himself in the heat and delicious pressure of Yusuf’s lips on his, his hands brushing down to caress the back of Nicolò’s neck and hold him close.

When they broke apart, Nicolò was panting. He opened his eyes and stared hazily at Yusuf, while his mind tried to sort through what had just happened and more importantly why it had stopped.

“Nicky, is that you? Do you remember?” Yusuf said as he searched Nicolò’s face frantically.

“I… No, I just...” Nicolò stuttered, “I wanted to know how it felt.”

Yusuf’s hands slipped from Nicolò’s shoulders and back to his sides. His brows stayed together in incomprehension. “But why?”

“Because,” Nicolò floundered. “You love him. More than I have seen _anyone_ love another. I wanted to know what that would feel like, because… I can’t _imagine_ that I was ever him. A man who does the right thing without fear, simply because it is right? One who is so _loved_ by someone like you, that you suffer so greatly without him?” He realized what he was saying and rushed to add, “I’m sorry, it was wrong of me not to ask first.”

Yusuf caught his wrist just as he moved to pull away from where he’d crowded, chest to chest with Yusuf in that fit of passion. Yusuf brought Nicolò's hand up between them, cradling it. “No, Nicolò, you don’t have to apologize, you _are_ him. Do you really think that after all these centuries together, I didn’t come to love every part of you? I think of you in a hundred years, and I love you, and I think of you on the first day we met in Jerusalem and I love you still, and I would if I met the man you were ten years before that in Rome. There is no time in your life, no part of you that exists that I would not love. And if we have to start again, I would do so without a moment’s hesitation, no matter how long it takes, because it is _you_.”

He’d barely finished the word when Nicolò surged forward to kiss Yusuf once more, a challenge this time, to see if he could taste any falsehood. But Yusuf melted against him, not taking but eager to be taken, not breaking apart even to breathe until Nicolò did so first. “I don’t know if I am ready,” he panted against Yusuf’s lips, looking down at them as he pressed their foreheads together. “I don’t know if this is what I want, or what I _should_ want, but I… I want to understand what he—what _I_ had.”

“But we had so much together, Nicolò, more than almost any lover in the world. It would take another millennium to show you,” Yusuf said, with a hint of teasing in how he brushed their noses together, his smile taking on a roguish tilt.

“We have only tonight,” Nicolò said, and could not help but to kiss the corner of Yusuf’s mouth at the desolation that swept his features. “I’m sorry, Yusuf, but I must do this. If I stay even a day longer, I know I will never leave. I must know first if my place is with God or else I will always wonder.”

Yusuf pulled back, studying Nicolò, as if desperate to find some hint in his face of how to change his mind, whether to plead or challenge. And if he pressed, Nicolò was less certain than ever that he would be able to say no.

But Yusuf did not press, though the doubt must have burned on Nicolò’s face like a flame. Yusuf only swallowed, his hand coming to rest on Nicolò’s shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. “I know.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his voice steadier as he said, “I know. I would willingly die a thousand times before I would become your jailer, Nicolò. If you return to me, I want it to be with a whole heart, not one split by doubt. No matter how long that is, you will always have me, whatever form that takes.”

“Tomorrow is still far away,” Nicolò said. He wanted to soothe the lines of despair from Yusuf’s brow, but to lie or give false promises would be crueler still. Instead, he ducked his head a little to catch Yusuf’s eye with a roguish grin of his own. “Plenty of time for you to prove the only gap remaining in your story.”

Yusuf frowned. “Gap?”

“You say we have been lovers for over _eight hundred_ years,” Nicolò said and raised his eyebrow in mocking disbelief. “I imagine if one could indeed love for so long, they would know better than any who have lived the best way to please the other. _If_ it was true.”

Yusuf barked a laugh. “Nicolò! Are you… _challenging_ me?”

“Will it be a challenge?” Nicolò grinned in response.

“Not at all,” Yusuf’s eyes crinkled at the corner. “But that is hardly the request of a holy man.”

“I have not yet taken any vows,” Nicolò reminded Yusuf and kissed him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author Note:** In case it isn't obvious (and you haven't read the tags), the next chapter will raise the fic's rating to Explicit. I will provide a summary at the bottom of Ch. 12 of any important story notes you need to know going forward, just in case anyone wants to skip it without missing anything. I've rarely had that be the case with readers, but I'm a relic from the early 00's era of fanfic when making explicit scenes optional was common practice, so I like to give the option.
> 
> Also, while this story doesn't have a strict soundtrack like some of my other fics, "Thnks fr th Mmrs" by Fall Out Boy encapsulates a lot of both Joe and Nicky's internal monologues, respectively, around this point of the story.
> 
> **Thank you for reading! As much as I love sharing this little tale with the community I especially love to hear your thoughts! If you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	12. Nicolò - NSFW

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter raises the story's rating to E. However, if you're not interested in reading explicit scenes, there is a summary of the story-relevant moments in this chapter in the End Notes so you won't miss anything if you skip it.

They stumbled into the bedroom and Yusuf slammed the door one-handed behind them without looking or taking his lips from Nicolò’s. Nicolò’s back thudded against the wall as Yusuf pressed close, his mouth hot on his, stealing all the thoughts from his head except _don’t stop_.

But stop Yusuf did, panting as he pulled away, with his arms bracketing Nicolò against the wall, their faces close enough that Nicolò could feel the heat pulsing between them. “If you want me to stop, you need only say so.”

“I thought you knew my desires better than I know myself,” Nicolò smirked and captured Yusuf’s lips again in a messy, open-mouthed kiss, tasting Yusuf’s chuckle as it rumbled in his chest.

“Oh, I do,” Yusuf countered when he broke away, “but you might not be ready for that.”

“Or, perhaps you’re not ready for me,” Nicolò said and wrapped his arms around Yusuf’s waist, pivoted, and pinned him up against the wall instead. Yusuf’s laugh turned into a moan as Nicolò found the fastening of his trousers, fumbling with the unfamiliar button for a moment before snarling under his breath and just dragging them down along with Yusuf’s small clothes. The fabric stopped midway down Yusuf’s thighs, but Nicolò didn’t need much more to get what he wanted.

He dropped to his knees and gazed up into Yusuf’s dark eyes as Nicolò let his hands slide down to his hips, then wrapped one arm around Yusuf's leg to brace himself, and with his other hand he drew out Yusuf’s cock. Nicolò’s hand stroked the velvet soft skin already drawn tight over Yusuf’s swelling cock and a shudder raced through Yusuf, whose head fell back against the wall with a thud.

Nicolò hesitated, for while Yusuf was well-formed and of a size that made Nicolò’s mouth water, there was no doubt that he lay with a pagan now. Yusuf was cut smooth in a way Nicolò had not seen until the bathhouses of Constantinople and shaved of any hair below the waist. Odd, but not… unpleasant. Quite the opposite.

Yusuf stilled and looked down at him in question. Nicolò gave a light stroke up and down the length to hide his pause and raised his eyebrow as he glanced up. “What was it like your—our first time?”

Yusuf gave a hoarse, breathy laugh. “You want another tale? _Now?”_

“I’m curious,” Nicolò said. He cupped Yusuf’s cock and darted his tongue over the tip, earning a gusting sigh. “Tell me whatever you wish. What brought you together. How it felt. Anything that comes to mind…” Nicolò smirked, tracing his fingertips over Yusuf’s length to draw out another gasp, “…for as long as you can.”

“Oh, you _bastard_ ,” Yusuf growled in mocking admiration, the sound choked off when Nicolò swallowed him down. It took a moment for Nicolò to close his lips around Yusuf’s length because of his own smirk, but once he schooled his expression, he settled in to trace his tongue along the underside, massaging it as he’d learned with Alessandro to make him gasp, and set a slow, teasing rhythm, with a glance up to remind Yusuf of his request.

“Right, the first time,” Yusuf huffed out a shaky breath. “It was— _fuck, Nicky_ —uh, outside Ramla. F-Frankish raiding party, ambushed us. A small force, but so were we. Of course you were with them. I couldn’t escape you in those days.”

Nicolò slid his lips up Yusuf’s cock and off, so his breath puffed over the tip as he said, “You must have been furious.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Yusuf laughed, a bitten off sound. He swallowed hard when Nicolò took him deep once more. “My Christian knight, back again. I could tell you were angry too, what with how you— _ah_ —you tore off after me the moment you saw I was there, driving your horse as if you intended to run me down before you ever drew your sword.”

Nicolò began stroking the base of Yusuf’s cock with his hand, using the support to work up a faster pace. Yusuf’s voice had grown far too steady there for a moment, but now his words were broken by a low groan and he had to clear his throat before he said, “W-We were so focused on _killing_ each other that we didn’t notice that our fellow soldiers had retreated, or see the clouds on the horizon until the sky went black. We had no choice but to seek shelter.”

“Mmm,” Nicolò acknowledged. Yusuf’s cock had begun to leak and the bitter salt was hitting the back of his throat. He changed his pace, making every rise and fall of his lips agonizingly slow and deep. After all, he did want to hear the end of this story.

Yusuf swore under his breath, in what language Nicolò couldn’t say, hearing only breathy, breaking consonants that were unmistakable in their meaning. “…There was a shepherd’s hut nearby, abandoned, its owners must have fled the fighting. I thought about killing you just for spite once we were inside, but you looked so…pathetic, drenched from the rain, your hair and beard a mess, and you were t-trying to get out of your soaked armor alone.” Yusuf’s breath hitched. “I reached over to help you with a buckle and you smacked my hand away, so of course I punched you, and suddenly we were grappling on the floor. And you know you must never let a Frankish knight get you in a grapple…”

Nicolò hummed in smug agreement. He’d wrestled since childhood and half the training he’d received for facing a fellow knight was how to disarm and drag them to the ground. He tightened his arm around Yusuf’s legs to demonstrate, which earned him another broken-off laugh, and a little thrust into his mouth.

Nicolò moaned and loosened the clench of his lips around Yusuf’s cock. He shifted the arm that held Yusuf in place to cup his ass, squeezing it in encouragement. It did not even cross his mind that this man, a heathen, would be too rough if he let him set the pace, not after what he’d seen of Yusuf’s kindness. But he also knew more than anything else that he wanted this good, _kind_ man who looked at him with such adoration to fuck his throat like he meant it.

“ _Ah, ya amar,_ ” Yusuf breathed. He cupped the back of Nicolò’s head, tangling the tips of his fingers in his hair, and began to move in counterpoint with Nicolò with quick, shallow thrusts. Tremors raced through the muscles of Yusuf’s lower belly. “We were tangled in one another, no skill, no finesse, just so _angry_ ,” he emphasized the word with harder thrust and Nicolò’s knees went weak, “I could feel you choking the life from me, _again_ , and I was l-losing all sensation, all thought, except that you were so beautiful that I had to kiss you, at least once before I died.” Yusuf laughed under his breath. “Little did I know, it was the best thing I could have done to break free of the grapple. You were so shocked you bolted off me, only later you said you’d never forgive me for that first kiss because you had been dreaming of it for years, even back then, and I had _beaten_ you to it. And, well, after that you didn’t have a problem with letting me help you out of your armor.”

Nicolò’s eyes closed as he listened, but there he did not see the shepherd's hut near Ramla, wherever that was. Instead, he saw the battlefield outside Jerusalem and imagined what might have happened had he and his Saracen found each other then. What if, instead of drawing their swords, they had drawn one another away from the fighting, and found a place far away with water and shade? What if they had sat and talked to one another, without violence, only learning from one another?

“The second time we saw each other was in— _fuck_ — a brothel in Jerusalem when I was hiding there to spy on your forces. You found me anyway, of course, but there was a bed and you said in that broken Arabic of yours that you would spare me another death as long as I left the city by dawn, and well, we had a bed…so, _ah_ — Nicolò, are you still listening?”

By way of answer, Nicolò moved his hand, relaxing his throat, and took Yusuf down to the root until his nose brushed Yusuf’s lower belly. His own loins were throbbing and his hand was soaked from spit and pre-come wrapped around the base of Yusuf’s cock as he lavished it with renewed attention. For as beautiful as he found this man’s voice, he was finding just how much more he enjoyed it broken with gasps of passion.

He unwrapped his arm from Yusuf’s leg and placed a hand on the one buried in his hair, clenching around it, urging Yusuf to pick up his pace. With heavy-lidded eyes he looked up at Yusuf, very deliberately sucking hard. Yusuf’s eyes widened and he whimpered, then squeezed his eyes shut as if the very sight of Nicolò was enough to make him spend. Indeed, Nicolò felt the shuddering pulse, the rushing feeling beneath his lips that Yusuf was close. Yusuf’s cock was hot and straining in his mouth, slick with his spit, and it slid easily between his lips as Yusuf picked up the pace.

“ _Ah,_ yes, my love, like that…” Yusuf whispered, his words losing shape as each breath became a panting gasp, as Nicolò loosened his lips only enough to allow Yusuf to use his mouth for his own pleasure. Nicolò was growing nearly delirious with his own desire as if flames burned along his skin, and his cock had begun to leak with want. Yusuf, even at the height of his passion, never grew so forceful that pleasure crossed into pain, even as his hips snapped forward with each thrust, speeding up until finally Yusuf gave a tight groan and held Nicolò’s head in place as he came.

Nicolò suckled at Yusuf’s cock, swallowing down each pulse before it could overwhelm his mouth, his mind lost in heat and touch. Yusuf’s fingertips brushed his ears as his grip on Nicolò’s head loosened and set him free to move away if he chose, but he lingered until he could trace his lips down Yusuf’s softening cock, swallowing once more and testing his jaw now that he’d fully released it. He’d felt a passing ache, but any pain seemed already to be fading, like the knife wound on his arm, so that he looked up dazed, tasting only Yusuf’s spend on his lips and the burning desire surging through his veins with each beat of his heart as he gazed upon Yusuf.

The pulse in Yusuf’s throat fluttered, exposed when he leaned his head back against the wall to shudder through the final aftershocks. Nicolò pressed his cheek against Yusuf’s thigh, panting, waiting for Yusuf to come back to himself.

Finally, Yusuf blinked and shook himself as if emerging from a daze. That lovely mouth that Nicolò would like to grow much more acquainted with, very soon, widened into a grin as Yusuf caught him watching. “Very well, point taken. You are not one to give up on a challenge so easily.”

Nicolò grinned back. “I would have thought you’d know that.”

“I do, I do,” Yusuf laughed, “but it is my fault for not thinking I’d see this side of you so soon. I should have known the man who challenged me outside the walls would not back down in the bed chamber.”

“Then as the victor, may I demand _my_ ransom?” Nicolò said with a raised eyebrow.

“Anything, my love. Always.”

Nicolò startled at the endearment and felt a blush burn across his cheeks. As if for some reason, those words struck him harder than the thought of sucking a pagan’s cock in a time and place where nothing made any sense. Perhaps making love to a Saracen bothered him less because the world around him felt like a dream. But within the confines of these walls, being called Yusuf’s ‘love’ was like a lightning bolt breaking the night sky, lighting the world around him and somehow making everything _real_.

“Fuck me?” Nicolò said before his nerve could fail. He winced at himself, at how his voice had almost cracked with emotion to finally voice this long-hidden desire. Yet when he looked up, Yusuf did not appear surprised or disgusted at another man begging this of him. If anything, his expression was soft and patient, waiting for Nicolò to continue, and he did so in a rush at that silent invitation, “There was never enough time on the road, and Alessandro preferred the role of the woman, but I have always wondered…” Words failed him and he struggled to voice what he’d always kept a secret close to his heart, never to be exposed to the rough world of his fellow soldiers, “…what it would be like, in the hands of someone who… someone who cared.”

“Oh, Nicolò,” Yusuf breathed and brushed his fingers over Nicolò’s cheek, cupping his face. He guided Nicolò to stand with the lightest of touches under his chin. “All you ever have to do is ask,” Yusuf said. “Here, take a seat on the bed.”

Nicolò nodded mutely, nerves fluttering inside him. He did as he was bidden, taking a seat to wait while Yusuf shucked his trousers and small clothes. He then straightened to peel off the thin shirt over his head until he stood naked before Nicolò, his softened cock still damp from Nicolò’s mouth and his smile both soft and blinding.

 _Madonna_ , the man was stunning. Nicolò’s breath skipped at the throb of lust that pulsed through him at the sight, his own cock straining. He pressed the heel of his hand against his cock to soothe the ache, unable to take his eyes from Yusuf. A dusting of black hairs curled at the center of the hard planes of his chest and his shoulders were broad, his arms lean and muscled, his thighs and calves strong and solidly built. Nicolò released a shuddering breath, suddenly wanting nothing more than to taste all the parts of Yusuf that he’d missed.

“I do not wish to presume your level of experience, but this would be a _little_ easier if you undressed too,” Yusuf said with a pointed once-over of Nicky’s clothed state.

Nicolò jolted and jerked his gaze back to Yusuf’s face. Yusuf winked at him and leaned forward with his hands bracketing Nicolò on the bed for a deep kiss. His fingers teased at the base of Nicolò’s thin shirt, plucking at the fabric, but leaving it to Nicolò to remove the barrier entirely.

“Right, I... yes,” Nicolò stuttered and replaced Yusuf’s fingers with his own to tug the shirt over his head and drop it to the floor. His fingers fumbled with the button and the metal links that bound the trousers tight but with a quick, expert motion, Yusuf interceded, freeing Nicolò, and he sighed with relief that his cock was no longer so tightly bound. The trousers and small clothes joined the shirt on the floor until he too stood bare.

This man had seen him naked before, Nicolò reminded himself, there was no reason for any apprehension, certainly no more than he would feel bathing before an attractive fellow soldier. But there was a new desire for Yusuf’s approval that replaced the disdain with which he’d once viewed his Saracen captor, and Nicolò searched Yusuf’s face for his reaction.

He found it. A flush gathered high in Yusuf’s cheeks, as if fevered, and his eyes were intent. He trailed his fingers up from Nicolò’s waist, along his side to smooth his palm over Nicolò’s shoulder and clasp the back of his neck. “So beautiful. The sight of you always thrills me, even after a millennium, _ya amar.”_

“I...what do you require of me for this?” Nicolò murmured, his gaze flicking to Yusuf’s lips and back up to his eyes.

“Just lie down, on your stomach for now, and try to relax,” Yusuf said. With a last kiss to Nicolò’s cheek, he drew away and went to one of the small tables by the bed from which he pulled out a clear flask.

Nicolò scooted back and then turned over to crawl on all fours to the center of the bed before stretching out in full. He lay his head on his folded arms and looked over at Yusuf, who was pouring golden-hued oil onto his hands to warm it.

“Is that for…?” A shiver ran through the muscles of his belly, part desire, part nerves, that this was happening after so many years of wondering what it would be like, and that he might do something wrong.

“Eventually,” Yusuf shifted onto the bed then knelt astride Nicolò, still rubbing his hands together. “How much have you done before now?”

Nicolò glanced back over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “I thought you would know?”

Yusuf chuckled. “I’m going to regret talking myself up like that, aren’t I? But no, I confess, I do not know this because it wasn’t something we talked about our first time. We didn’t talk about much in those days except the blasphemies we wished to call down on one another’s head and by the time you came to live with me, we were men in our eighties, though we did not look it. So, exactly what you’ve done before and how much experience you had with being taken by a man as of the day we met is _not_ something that I can be certain of to my full satisfaction.”

Nicolò snorted and turned his head back to cushion his chin on his hands, as much to hide the blush that surely must show on his face. “As I said, Alessandro preferred to play the woman, so I am familiar with preparing another. And I have… touched myself that way, when time and privacy allow, and found I enjoy it.”

Yusuf puffed out a slow breath above him, his voice shaky as he said, “Good, that’s… that’s good.” He cleared his throat. “We should relax you first anyway. If you feel any discomfort, only say so.”

“Hmm,” Nicolò mumbled, part in doubt that he would ever admit to such weakness, and in part because at that moment Yusuf’s warm hands, slick with oil, had smoothed a line along the muscles of his back, driving the breath gently from his lungs. “I feel I am in greater danger of falling asleep.”

“Don’t fear on that account, my love.” Yusuf bent down and kissed the shell of Nicolò’s ear, then whispered into it, “You will not have the chance.”

Nicolò tried to summon a response, but Yusuf’s hands were moving, driving his thumbs into the muscles on either side of his spine and working down. The bathhouses in Constantinople offered such a service, but it had been years since he’d had the opportunity to indulge like this, and even then none had hands so skilled as Yusuf’s at finding and dispatching every spot of tension. Yusuf seemed to know each of Nicolò’s muscles individually, massaging and teasing each in turn, especially around his shoulders, which had been tight all day from the anxiety of being in a world that was so loud and unfamiliar. Bit by bit, he unraveled: the wine had relaxed his mind and now his body followed until he felt he would dissolve into the soft bed they lay on.

Gradually, Yusuf worked lower, until the muscles he was digging into were at the base of Nicolò spine, and then, into his buttocks. Nicolò bit back a groan, firming his mouth and burying his face in one of the pillows as Yusuf’s hands began to work him there with the same strength and tenderness they had showered upon the rest of his body.

“Raise your hips,” Yusuf murmured and wrapped those strong fingers around Nicolò to guide him upward. Nicolò needed the help, for his mind had descended into a fog since Yusuf began to touch him, a haze shot through with heat and pulses of desire as Yusuf worked lower. His cock had softened at the beginning of the massage while he was lost in sensation, but as Yusuf guided him upward it was all he could do not to squirm beneath that touch, anticipating the prod of Yusuf’s cock as he finally took his pleasure of Nicolò as promised.

Only to find yet again that he’d misjudged Yusuf, for instead he kissed each cheek reverently, and then there was the _heat_ of a wet mouth on Nicolò’s most sensitive place.

Nicolò sucked in a breath. His eyes flew open and he was staring down at his own hands, white-knuckled and tangled in the sheets. Then his eyes rolled back and he whimpered as that searing touch swiped around his rim for, like Yusuf’s kiss, the sensation was beyond anything he’d ever experienced before.

Nicolò’s thighs trembled as the plundering grew relentless, and before he knew it his every breath emerged as a gasp, and then as a sob of desperation. He bit down on the pillow to muffle his cries before they could humiliate him, while Yusuf’s beard provided a delicious, scratching counterpoint to the sweetness of his mouth on his skin.

Then Yusuf’s mouth vanished and the faint whimpers Nicolò had been panting out with each breath became a needy cry as Yusuf’s oiled-finger alternated with his mouth. Barely the tip at first, but between the wine, the massage, and his mouth, there was little resistance. Shivers skittered up and down Nicolò’s skin as Yusuf began to alternate between using his hand and his tongue, until Nicolò couldn’t remember who he was, or where, or anything else except how to beg.

“Y-Yusuf... _”_ Nicolò stuttered. He couldn’t control the muscles in his thighs any longer and they trembled so hard his entire body shook. A drop of fluid dribbled from the head of his cock. “Take me, I… _please, Yusuf…Please.”_

“Soon, _hayati,_ ” Yusuf soothed. He had two fingers inside Nicolò now and Nicolò choked as they bent and found the spot he always sought when pleasuring himself, the one that made Alessandro scream with delight in Rome. “Hold on a little longer and I promise it will be worth your while.”

Hold on? Words had lost their meaning and he struggled to remember what these could signify except that he would have to _wait._ Nicolò buried his face in the pillow and moaned. He couldn’t feel anything else except Yusuf’s fingers inside him and his own release building, like a wave growing in power far out to sea, one that would destroy him when it arrived. He made a small, desperate sound, another plea, too far gone for words.

Yusuf’s fingers stayed inside him, pressing against the spot and rubbing it relentlessly, but there was a shifting sound of fabric and then Yusuf’s thighs were pressing warm on either side of his own. The fingers slowly, so slowly, retracted until they were only teasing his rim. There was a sound and Nicolò vaguely connected that Yusuf had reopened the flask of oil and was slicking himself and then the rim of Nicolò’s entrance.

He panted, sucking down air, lightheaded with anticipation when finally he felt the head of Yusuf’s cock nudge against him.

Nicolò moaned unabashedly, pressing back against Yusuf, demanding all of him if only to provide some relief from the _need_ consuming him inside and out, sparking over his skin. Nicolò remembered who this was, that commanding figure on the wall framed by the sun, and the first time they’d set eyes on one another, Yusuf's dark eyes and the glitter of rings on the very fingers that pulled him apart now, and knew that he should have burned with shame or horror. This was the enemy, the most humiliating person he could submit to, the sort of man he had set out to face and defeat, now bending him over a soft bed.

The thought should have dimmed his arousal. Instead, the image of himself, on his knees before Yusuf, to offer and be taken for his pleasure, was like a spark on oil-soaked kindling and he was moaning, pushing back onto Yusuf’s cock in desperation. But Yusuf only shushed him gently and rubbed a soothing hand over his thighs to steady Nicolò and hold him in place. To hold him in _his_ place, beneath Yusuf. Inch by inch, it wasn’t fast enough, and Yusuf was so agonizingly careful, holding back even when Nicolò pushed up on his elbows to try to take more.

“Almost there, my love, patience,” Yusuf whispered. His own voice had grown hoarse, breaking over the endearment. “You’re so beautiful. Look at you, taking me like this.”

Nicolò sobbed and just before he could gasp out another plea, he felt Yusuf bottom out, his pelvis grinding against Nicolò’s ass. He propped himself onto one elbow and reached back blindly, grabbing Yusuf’s fingers with enough force to bruise. _“Please_.”

Yusuf held his hand in return but did not move at first, waiting. Waiting until Nicolò’s breathing evened and he was able to _feel_ every inch of the length inside him, more full than he’d ever been with his own fingers. It was like every part of him, every scrap capable of feeling sensation, was alight from this singular touch. He burned with it, desperate for more, afraid of how much more he could feel than _this,_ but it was a distant thought compared to how much he wanted it _now_.

Finally, Yusuf began to move and the last shreds of coherent thought fled Nicolò’s mind. He was nothing, a nameless being consumed by lust, being relentlessly filled and stretched, the pressure building. His hand fell back by his side, without strength and his cock wept a steady stream of fluid. If he did not touch himself soon he would die, and come back, and if there was any scrap of him left that could speak, he would have begged Yusuf to touch him now and so he could find release _._

He stuttered something, barely words, only artless sounds and broken consonants of need. Yusuf gasped out, “Yes, love, I know. I’ve got you…”

When Yusuf’s oil-slick hand wrapped around Nicolò’s dripping cock, he tensed, shuddering. His body clenched around Yusuf, rutting desperately back against him, the pleasure of that distant wave finally crashing down upon him, reaching into him, bone-deep. Even as the pleasure crested, the desire for more shuddered through him, though he was at the very edge of overstimulation. Then with a groan, Yusuf took back his hand and grabbed Nicolò’s hips, pulling him onto his thrusts, each one accompanied by a breathy growl of desire that was almost a snarl as he buried himself deep into Nicolò again and again and Nicolò moved with him, as the last of any lingering want extinguished with Yusuf’s last thrusts as he too came, a moment that felt as if it stretched forever, before finally both of them stilled, panting.

His mind was a fog. The last strength went out of Nicolò's arms and he collapsed onto his belly, pressing his forehead into the bed and breathing hard. Yusuf gently pulled himself free and then collapsed down beside him on his back, then traced an idle hand down Nicolò’s flank.

“If that wasn’t enough, just give me a moment, and then we can continue,” Yusuf grinned.

Nicolò turned his head to the side and stared at him, wild-eyed with incredulity. “I think I finally believe you that we are not dead,” Nicolò mumbled. “But only because you waited until now to kill me.”

Yusuf barked a laugh, his face wreathed in smiles as he rolled over and pressed his forehead against Nicolò’s shoulder, wrapping his arm around him in a tight embrace. They were both slick with cooling sweat and both, Nicolò realized, grinning like fools.

“Here, before we get too comfortable, let me wash up, or I won’t be able to stop from kissing you,” Yusuf said and released his arm from around Nicolò to totter unsteadily into the small washroom beside the bed. Somehow, there was the sound of rushing water, like a stream cascading over pebbles, and Nicolò closed his eyes, unsure he was ready for another marvel of this new world while still trying to remember whether or not he had toes.

He must have drifted because he was startled back to consciousness by Yusuf poking his head out from the washroom. His black curls clung to his face in drooping ringlets that were so charming that Nicolò’s heart twisted and he was helpless against a sudden wave of affection for this impossible man. “Would you like to join? The water is warm and that oil on your back will not be pleasant to sleep in.”

“Oh, the oil on my _back_ is what concerns you?” Nicolò snorted, which earned him a grin. But Yusuf was right that given a choice, he’d rather be clean. He crawled off the bed, his legs threatening to give out from the lingering weakness of pleasure but, he noted with some surprise, none of the pain Alessandro sometimes complained of in his good-natured way when Nicolò had grown too excited during their lovemaking. Another benefit of this healing gift, certainly, and one he had not considered.

Steam rose from the washroom where he found Yusuf standing under the spray, washing white foam from his beard. Hot water cascaded from a metal pipe in the wall, shielded from the rest of the room by _more_ glass, like one of the hot springs outside Genova but with a waterfall of its own. He did his best not to think about it as he stepped in beside Yusuf. The water was soothing to the touch, flowing freely over their skin, washing away the sweat. Yusuf took a sponge from where it hung from a hook on the wall and laved it over Nicolò’s chest, before leaning in to kiss him on the throat.

Nicolò reached up to trace his fingertips over the curls on the back of Yusuf’s head, before pressing his hand to the back of Yusuf's neck to hold him close. He closed his eyes, relief and something that might have been love, or whatever one should call that warm feeling, welling in his chest at the feeling of Yusuf in his arms. For Alessandro that feeling had been a spring: bubbling and joyous, but this? This was a torrent. He wanted to hold Yusuf against him forever. And yet, tomorrow Nicolò would leave him, to spend ten years in service to God. His eyes opened.

Ten years. It wasn’t long, he told himself as he stared unseeing at the tiles on the wall. Not if one didn’t age. Perhaps this warmth unfolding in his chest would fade once he returned to a life of prayer and he would know he had made the right choice.

Or, perhaps it would grow, until it burnt him up from the inside, and one way or another he would have his answer. He would know if he was meant for God or for Man. Unless… what if God _had_ provided him an answer already? What if He had granted Yusuf to Nicolò—or Nicolò to Yusuf—only for Nicolò to be too blinded by pride and stubbornness to see His gift for what it was?

“Falling asleep already?” Yusuf teased and pulled back to gaze upon Nicolò. His smile was so _bright,_ as if just looking at Nicolò gave him all the joy the world had to offer.

“Yes, I suppose I am,” Nicolò smiled back faintly and leaned in to kiss a droplet of water that trickled down Yusuf’s nose, before kissing again his lips.

Yusuf met his kiss, his lips warm and soft, but broke away first. “Nicolò, I…” Yusuf murmured and his brow drew together as he searched Nicolò’s face, lips parted as if to say… something. He reached up to cup Nicolò’s face but at the last moment, his fingers curled an inch away, and he let his hand drop to his side once more. The water tumbled around them like rain. “Never mind. Let’s get you to bed.”

 _What?_ Nicolò thought, _What were you about to say?_ Though in his heart he knew. Just as he knew that if Yusuf asked now, he would not be able to say no.

But this was not the time for such decisions, not drunk on Yusuf’s warmth, on love, and on wine. Tomorrow would be clearer and he would remember his purpose. Tomorrow, his heart would not be so overwhelmed by this feeling, this love like nothing his heart had known since he crested the hill to look upon Jerusalem, and understood somewhere deep within his soul that his destiny waited for him within.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter Summary:**  
>  Nicolò and Joe make love. Nicky asks for more stories while he takes care of Joe and Joe, laughing and somewhat incredulous, tells them about the first couple of times they made love while they were still enemies. After, Joe takes care of Nicky, as promised, with astonishing skill and familiarity, which further cements Nicky’s acceptance of the idea they were lovers for centuries. While cleaning up in the shower before going to sleep, Nicky muses on the overwhelming affection for Joe that the lovemaking has inspired in him, but is wary of how a night of passion may impact his judgment. He believes he must still at least _try_ to serve God once more at the monastery before he makes a final decision but cannot help make the connection between the sense of love and destiny he felt at the sight of Jerusalem and Joe who was within the walls at the time, wondering if perhaps he has mistaken which of the two was really what God wanted for him.
> 
>  **Author Note:** If you need a chuckle, the song I had stuck in my head when envisioning the tone of Nicky and Joe's disastrous "first time" outside Ramla was "December, 1963 (Oh What a Night!)" by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons while they beat the crap out of each other and then start kissing.
> 
> **Thank you for reading! As much as I love sharing this little tale with the community I especially love to hear your thoughts! If you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	13. Joe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leaving Rome.

Joe woke curled up in a nest of blankets, warmth and the scent of _Nicky_ all around him. There he drifted, half-floating at the very edge of dreams when the slow drip of consciousness back to his waking mind brought with it memories of the past two days, and what was to happen on this one. 

His eyes opened. The room was dark save for a faint yellow light streaming beneath the doorway from the parlor and he realized what had woken him: the sound of Andy and Booker gathering their gear, preparing to leave the safe house. He swallowed and shifted to see Nicky lying beside him, staring at the ceiling with his hand tucked under his head.

He knew. He knew by the way Nicky held himself, the way his jaw set, the shifting of the muscles at the corner of his eyes, by a hundred tiny details he could never properly put into words even if he wrote a thousand poems on the subject, and he had. But he asked because he had to.

“Nicky, _hayati_ , do you remember? Are you back with us?”

Nicky shifted, like a marble statue coming to life, as he turned over on his side to face Joe. His gaze flicked down, away from Joe, as if ashamed.

 _“I’m sorry, Yusuf,”_ Nicky murmured in the old dialect, the one not spoken by anyone in the world outside of their bedroom for hundreds of years. He reached up and traced a hand over Joe’s cheek. A fond gesture, but in the way of a passing lover, a brief if pleasant memory on a long road when the traveler had not yet finished his journey. _“I’m so sorry._ ”

 _No, no, no_ , an uncomprehending corner of Joe’s mind whispered, _No, there’s still time. There has to be time._

But they'd had _so much_ time already. Joe had grown greedy with it, behaving as if it would never run out. In his arrogance, he’d thought himself _wise_ for his ability to face down eternity, but he saw now against the stark reality of losing Nicky, that it was not _wisdom_ that gave him the strength to confront the horrors of their endless, inescapable existence. It was faith. _Nicky’s_ faith.

It was _Nicky_ who believed that their last death would be within a breath of the other’s, just as their first as immortals had been. It was _Nicky_ who believed, to the very depths of his soul, that whatever destiny brought them to this life _meant_ for them to be together and thus would never tear them apart. Joe had seen the immense cruelty of the world again and again and had never _really_ shared Nicky’s certainty in a universe where destiny existed and there was some divine _reason_ that the two of them were brought into this life together. Yet, somehow, maybe because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate, Nicky had convinced him of this: that he and Joe need not fear eternal life because they would never face it alone.

And now, Nicky was leaving first.

Joe’s hand seized around Nicky’s arm compulsively, as if he could hold him there forever. His throat tightened, he could barely breathe and if he suffocated now and went down, stayed down, it would be better. Except then Nicky would be alone and what if he came back and Joe was _gone_?

_You will survive it because you have to, to be there for him at the end when he comes back._

If Nicky came back.

He was like Andromache now, Joe realized. Once, he’d thought he understood her grief, after witnessing it for half a millennium, but he hadn’t understood the barest shadow. This would only be the first day of their time apart, and it already felt like a thousand years, because that’s what it _could_ be. This could be the last time he _ever_ held Nicky in his arms. What if ten years wasn't just a journey where Nicky found himself again and came home, but the start of another life? Nicky could reach the end of that decade and discover he’d found his calling, now a different man in the wrong century, with a path before him that took him far away from Joe forever.

 _“Not yet.”_ The words slipped out and already he could see Nicky pulling back, mouth tightening to a stubborn line. But that wasn’t what Joe had meant. _“We will go, I promise. Just… a little longer here, please?_ ”

The stubbornness faded, softened into sympathy, then what might have been grief. Nicky nodded and reached over to tilt Joe’s chin up, each movement so gentle it was an agony in itself. His kiss was warm from sleep and soft as a caress.

Joe broke away first because if he didn’t he wouldn’t be able to stop. He would devour Nicky, pin him down and _hold_ him there, shout for Andy to help and… and… and he would loathe himself the second he did. The pain of losing Nicky would be nothing compared to that of being hated by him, as Joe knew Nicky would the second he became his jailer. Then he wouldn’t be Andromache at all but rather the embodiment of Quynh’s iron coffin.

He couldn’t look at Nicky. He could barely see, or breathe anyway, and he shook his head, back and forth like a wounded animal. His Nicky would have known how to calm him, there was barely any need for words between them. He tightened his arms around Nicky and buried his face against his chest, just holding him, struggling to breathe, to lessen the suffocating tightness in his throat. He closed his eyes, focusing on the warmth of Nicky’s skin against his forehead, the warmth and weight of him in Joe’s arms.

This is what he would have for the next ten years. This was the memory he would take with him, so at least in dreams and for those first clouded moments upon waking, he could remember what it felt like to have Nicky home in his arms.

* * *

Andy and Booker were out of the house and had left behind a note on the dining room table saying they would be back soon once the car was packed and ready to go. In the meantime, Joe had showered then drawn a bath for Nicky, clarified that yes, baths were a daily thing now, even if they’d washed up the night before, and left him to it without checking to see if Nicky had accepted this new fact. Joe had other matters on his mind.

Always before they’d traveled with their clothes co-mingled. It wasn’t as if they’d be going anywhere apart, or had taken separate rooms by choice since the fall of Outremer. There was a spare duffel bag stuffed away at the bottom of one of the kit bags and Joe knelt in the bedroom, staring at the neatly stacked pile of folded clothes he’d put mechanically into place before realizing he now had to separate them out. The monastery would provide for Nicky’s basic needs, but it wouldn’t do to send Nicky there without at least a week’s worth of his own clothing.

But Joe’s hands were frozen, halfway to the black hoodie Nicky had worn yesterday, and before that regularly on missions. He knew he should send it along, it was the one thing that had made Nicky comfortable. But Joe’s hands trembled as he lifted it from the stack and hugged it against his chest, burying his face in the fabric and smelling _Nicky_. The scent of home. The scent of the air around him ever since they came to live together, for they rarely left each other’s sides since, and when they did, they felt every second of the separation, how the world itself felt _wrong_.

It was petty of him to keep it, he knew, and selfish, but he promised himself that he would buy Nicky another. It wasn’t like having this particular hoodie would mean much to Nicky, but it would mean everything to Joe. He folded the soft, black fabric and put it aside. With that, some of the ice cracked and broke around him and he could move, stilted and slow as a man fatally wounded, and began to pack a bag for the journey that would take Nicky far away from him.

* * *

Too soon, Booker returned and the three of them were locking up the safe house and exiting through the hidden door at the back of the closet, into the tunnel where he had carried Nicky over his shoulders in those few terrifying minutes when he couldn’t understand why Nicky wouldn’t wake. Those moments seemed so innocent now, in retrospect, his terror only a shadow of the reality.

Nicky was silent, stoic, as they led him through the dank tunnel beneath the apartments that would take them out to a side street far away, where the car was waiting. Booker lit their way with a flashlight. Andy was ahead, waiting with the car. The only sounds were the steady drip of distant water, the rustling scrape of their feet on the hard-packed floor, and their breathing. Joe was carrying both their bags, one on each shoulder and Nicky walked by his side, occasionally turning his head to take in the rusted pipes that spread across the walls like spiderwebs.

 _“I remember this place,”_ Nicky murmured in Ligurian. _“This is where I first woke, before the pain drove me back into a stupor.”_

Joe frowned, his steps hesitating but Booker’s pace didn’t slow and he had little desire to be left down here without a light. He glanced over at Nicky. _“You were in pain, Nicolò? Why didn’t you say something?”_

Nicky chuckled. _“What was it you said so eloquently the other day? Oh yes, I had other things on my mind, Yusuf. I had just been kidnapped by a Saracen, a rogue Frank, and an Amazon of legend. Having a headache was the least of my concerns. Bright light is still painful, yes, but otherwise, the ache has been no worse than what one might feel after a night of drinking unwatered wine.”_

 _“Nicolò… we don’t_ have _pain after a night of drinking, not anymore,”_ Joe protested.

 _“Hmm, so this gift is good for more than the battlefield and the bedroom after all,”_ Nicky said lightly. _“Yusuf, please, it’s nothing.”_

 _There shouldn’t be any pain_ at all, Joe wanted to protest, when he saw that Booker had stopped at the rusted iron door out to the street, and was struggling with the handle. Joe quickly passed the bags to Nicky and stepped up to help Booker. The rusted iron _shrieked_ when they wrenched it open and sunlight poured down into the tunnel.

Light. Joe whipped around just in time to see Nicky grimace and shield his eyes, blinking furiously against the rays. Joe’s hand was already half-way to the sunglasses in his pocket when he remembered how this had happened the day before too. But then, he had assumed Nicky’s eyes only needed to adjust from his time locked up in the safe house. He hadn’t thought anything of the odd reaction.

 _“Nicolò,”_ Joe said and Nicky looked up as he proffered the sunglasses, relief spreading instantly over his face. _“You dropped these in the park the other day. Would you like them back?_ ”

 _“Ah, my favorite miracle!”_ Nicky said and eagerly took them from Joe's hand. He sighed with relief the moment they were on his face. _“Could I… would it be possible for me to borrow these for a time, Yusuf? At least until I have earned enough to trade for my own? If they are precious, of course, I would not presume…”_

Joe remembered with a pang the black hoodie he had stuffed away in his own bag. Nicky had accepted a long-sleeved shirt and trousers today and had not asked for a hood. Joe had been too relieved to wonder why. _“Of course,_ hayati, _”_ Joe said. _“They are easy to replace and even if they weren’t, what’s mine is yours, and always will be.”_

Nicky beamed at him and Joe was lost, just letting that smile wash over him. The sight of Nicky’s joy could bring him back from the edge of death. Andy called him a sucker when it came to Nicky, and Joe could barely mount the faintest protest, knowing that if Nicky asked him for the moon, that he would drop everything to weave the rope to catch it for him.

There was the sound of a throat being cleared behind him. “Uh, Joe, we really do need to get going. Or at least stop standing out in the open like this.”

Joe started and ripped his gaze away from Nicky to see Booker waiting by the door, his mouth twisted in apology. They had just been standing there, staring at one another. “Right. Sorry.”

The three of them found Andromache waiting behind the driver’s seat of a nondescript silver Fiat Punto. Every other new technology of the industrial age, Andy had met with deep suspicion, all except for cars. She had been crazy about them from the start. Perhaps it was a relic of the steppe horse archer she would never cease to be, but somewhere in Andy’s private collection was one of the first cars ever manufactured. Joe had seen her dripping with blood from a job and shaking with exhaustion only to shove one of them out of the way if they dared make a move towards the driver’s seat. Driving was Andy’s job, or else.

Booker took the front passenger seat, leaving Nicky and Joe together in the back once Joe dropped their bags in the trunk. Muscle memory had him halfway to the other side of the Fiat to get in before he recalled this was only the _third time_ Nicky remembered ever getting in a car.

Except before he could chivalrously swoop in with the assist, there was a _click_ as Nicky pulled the door open himself.

He looked at Joe over the car. _“What? The chariot may be magic, but a door is a door.”_

And, well, there was nothing Joe could say to that.

“So, euh, where are we headed?” Booker said once everyone was in and settled.

Joe blinked. “I… don’t know. Seriously, did _no one_ ask Nicky where this place is?”

“Joe,” Andy said. She flicked the rearview mirror down to look pointedly at him. “We’re asking _you_. Where are we _going?_ ”

Oh. She meant were they going to the monastery _at all._ As if at the last minute he would change his mind, shout at Andy to _drive, just drive!_ and lock Nicky up in Goussainville like some sort of demented ex-lover, cackling about how Nicky finally gets to live in a church.

Perhaps he should be grateful to have a family so willing to do that for him, instead of disturbed that they’d leapt to just kidnapping Nicky before _he_ did. “We’re going to the monastery. Wherever the fuck it is,” Joe sighed. _“Nicolò, love, what is the name of this place?”_

 _“The monastery of Santa Scolastica, in Subiaco. It would be at least a day’s travel on foot, but with these chariots…”_ Nicky said uncertainly.

Booker began typing into his phone. _“It’s just over an hour away.”_

Nicky blanched. _“Only an hour? I thought…”_ He cast a stricken look at Joe.

 _You thought we’d have more time?_ Joe thought, _Yeah, that makes two of us._

 _“It’s your decision, Nicolò. None of us can make it for you,”_ Joe said wearily. _“Do whatever you must so your heart is not divided.”_

Nicky swallowed, looking as young as Joe had ever seen him. Younger, in fact, because he’d only glimpsed this man, and the next time they met, the soul behind Nicky’s eternally youthful eyes was aged decades by what he saw inside the walls of Jerusalem.

 _“If you’re going to change your mind, do it quickly,”_ Andy said. She shifted the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. _“Subiaco is out of our way.”_

“Andy!” Joe snapped, as a look of anguished indecision tightened Nicky’s face, his eyes darting between Joe and the front of the car.

_“What? He took less than a day to decide he’s going to throw away his life moldering in a cell, begging forgiveness from God for the exact same fucking sins his Church bribed him to commit in the first place. So if he’s going to change his mind, he should hurry up and do it with the same careful fucking consideration he showed you yesterday and stop wasting our time.”_

“Or he’ll dig his heels in and forget any doubts he might have had because you made it into a fucking challenge!” Joe retorted in English.

“Well good riddance, then, because if _that’s_ what makes up his mind, then he’s not our Nicky anyway, because _our_ Nicky wasn’t a goddamn _child!”_ Andy snapped.

“Oh, look who’s talking! Six thousand years and you’re still about as diplomatic as your fucking battleaxe!”

 _“Yusuf, enough!”_ Nicky’s hand clamped around his wrist and jerked Joe to face him. _“Please, stop arguing on my behalf. It’s not your responsibility.”_

_“I wasn’t…”_

_“I may not speak your language, but I can still follow the meaning,”_ Nicky said pointedly. _“Her words don’t matter. A pagan isn’t going to sway me from God’s path with a few insults.”_

“Shit, and here I was hoping the tough love angle would work,” Andy muttered. Her eyes flicked up to the mirror to catch Joe’s and she shrugged. “What? You would have thanked me if it did,” she said and gunned the car through a light about a tenth of a millisecond before it turned red. The corner of her lips turning up almost imperceptibly when Nicky let out a terrified squeak like a mouse and grabbed the back of Booker's seat for dear life.

* * *

“Hey, Book,” Joe said once they made it out of the winding, terracotta-roofed streets of Rome’s historical center and onto the A24. Nicky sat back in his seat with the sunglasses in one hand and his other clamped over his eyes, while his lips moved in silent prayer at Andy’s driving.

“Yeah?”

“You’re a Catholic. Any idea if this place is going to expect us to pay some kind of tithe or, I don’t know, an indulgence for them to house Nicky somewhere that isn’t a rat-infested basement?”

“Hell if I know, Joe, it hasn’t exactly come up before,” Booker said with a glance back over his shoulder. “I guess I could give them a call in a bit and ask?”

“In a bit _when_?” Joe frowned. “We’re going to be there in an hour.”

“In a _bit,_ once I figure out if that black Mercedes is the same one that pulled out behind us when we left the safe house,” Booker shot back.

“It is,” Andy said tersely.

“What? _Shit,”_ Joe leaned over to look behind them in the rearview mirror without turning around. Sure enough, there was a black Mercedes prowling a lane over in their blindspot. “Are all the guns in the trunk?”

“Got one for you here,” Booker said. He reached down then placed a handgun on the armrest between him and Andy. Joe swiped it, holding it low to check the chamber. “Sure would be a great time to have our sniper back.”

“We’ll handle it,” Joe grunted, glancing up again in the mirror. “Andy, what’s the plan?”

“There’s a detour near Tibur. We’re going to head that way and see if it follows us,” Andy said. “Should add about a half-hour to the drive. If it's still there, we pull off somewhere quiet and take care of it.”

Tense silence fell over the car so that Joe almost jumped when Nicky leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder, whispering, _“Yusuf, what’s going on?”_

_“We think the slavers followed us.”_

_”For an ambush?”_ Nicky said. _“I can help you fight.”_

Joe shook his head. _“Do you see this?”_ He tilted the pistol for Nicky’s inspection. _“This is a weapon, like a bow but deadlier. If we are ambushed, they will certainly attack us with more weapons like this and we will shoot back with our own. The noise will be loud, louder than anything you have ever heard. If that happens, I need you to lie flat on the seat and not move unless one of us tells you to. Do you understand?”_

 _“You wish for me to hide from a battle?"_ Nicky said, his mouth twisting into a skeptical frown. _"It’s not as if I’ll die."_

 _“Remember, our immortality doesn’t last forever,”_ Joe said tersely. He glanced at Nicky out of the corner of his eye. _“Just because we have been granted long life, it does not mean we should squander it needlessly, for one day it will not be there. When you were first injured, my fear was that your time had come, and that was why your memory would not return.”_

He expected Nicky to push back on this, but he only nodded in understanding, and quoted, “Non tentabis Dominum Deum tuum.” _Do not put the Lord, thy God, to the test._

_“Exactly.”_

Joe stole a look over his shoulder at the black Mercedes. Tinted windows, a bad sign, but not enough of a guarantee to justify attacking them first. The Fiat descended back into silence, Andy’s knuckles white on the wheel, Nicky tense by Joe’s side, his eyes occasionally flicking to the others, following their lead. The exit approached as everyone held their breath.

Then Booker’s phone went berserk.

“Nom de dieu de _merde…!_ ” Booker swore.

“Mother _fuck,_ Book!” Andy shouted and jerked the wheel. A car horn screamed behind them as they cut through two lanes and Andy slammed the gas pedal down to the floor to speed up going into the exit. The little Fiat wheezed and whirred in its desperate struggle to reach the speeds Andy demanded of it.

Nicky gave a strangled yelp and threw himself forward to clutch at the back of Booker's seat. His eyes squeezed shut and a flurry of Latin prayers spilled from his lips and released his death-grip on the back of the seat only once to cross himself.

“Shit, shit, _shit!”_ Booker began digging through his inner jacket pocket until he yanked out a buzzing Nokia, his gun in his other hand. “Pronto?”

“Uh, guys?” Joe twisted in his seat as car horns blared behind them. The black Mercedes was switching lanes like it was the F1, flying past lines of cars in the breakdown lane to catch them. “That car is definitely after us.”

“Yes, I figured that out, thank you, Joe!” Andy snarled. “Booker, next time get us a car with a fucking _engine_ , would you?”

Booker ignored her and shrugged his shoulder against his ear to lean away with the phone, saying in Italian, _“Yes, I got it, you’ll find the rest of the money in a red postbox at the building where you met us. Now, what about the…what? In the head? I… listen, I’m going to pass you to his partner, you can tell him this.”_

His hand snaked back between the seats to wave the Nokia in Joe’s face. “Take it! It’s the doctor, she says she found something.”

“ _Now?_ Tell her to call us back!” Joe shouted. The Mercedes swerved hard, now only one car behind them.

“It’s a single-use burner, Joe. There’s like twenty minutes on it. Just take the damn phone!”

“What the fuck does that even _mean?_ ”Joe took the phone and pressed it to his ear. “Pronto?”

_“Guerra speaking. This is Nicolò’s partner? Listen, I will be brief. It sounds like you’re busy there.”_

_“Yeah, you could say that,”_ Joe grunted and threw another glance back over his shoulder. The black Mercedes was on the bumper of the car behind them. The mirrored glass gave no indication of who was driving or how many were in the car. It could be a fucking clown car with two dozen goons in it, for all they knew.

 _“His bloodwork came back normal,”_ Guerra said, _“and he’s otherwise perfectly healthy, but were you aware of the fact he’s been shot?”_

 _Yeah, about 40,000 times since guns were invented,_ Joe bit back the hysterical urge to say and did his best under the circumstances to sound surprised. _“Shot? How is that possible?”_

 _“Perhaps he didn’t tell you, as it most likely happened years ago, but the fact he survived is miraculous. The bullet struck at a low velocity and seems to have wedged between the folds of his temporal lobe, pressing up against the hippocampus. His brain seems to have healed_ around _it over the years, which would explain his light sensitivity.”_

Joe twisted in his seat to stare at Nicky.

 _“So there’s a bullet just… sitting there. In his brain,”_ Joe said blankly.

“ _Yes. I’m not sure of your means or… location, right now. Nor do I want to know,”_ Guerra added in a rush. _“But if you can find a surgeon familiar with traumatic brain injury, perhaps one with a military background, that might be your best option if you want it removed.”_

 _“Oh, right. A surgeon. We should… get one of those…”_ Joe said, still staring at Nicky, who was looking back quizzically. Andy cursed from the front seat and the Fiat lurched as the lanes narrowed from three abreast to two. Outside, the urban sprawl faded into farmland. _“Was there anything else?”_

_“No, that’s all. I would send the images for your record, but your associate paid well to have those destroyed along with the blood samples. If you have no further questions…”_

“We’re going off-road, everyone, hang on!” Andy shouted and spun the wheel.

 _“No, I think we’re good. Thank you for all your h—”_ Joe said, or tried to.

Andy slammed the brakes and jerked the car in a perpendicular drift onto a dirt road leading off into a field. The world tilted on its axis and the phone flew out of Joe’s hand. He watched, bemused, as it tumbled through the air.

Then, very briefly, Joe remembered that Andy’s warning had been in English and that he never _did_ explain seatbelts to Nicky, just as the full weight of a grown man slammed into him and the world went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations:**  
>  Hayati - (Arabic) "my life", an endearment  
> Tibur - (Latin) the Ancient Roman name for modern Tivoli  
> Non tentabis Dominum Deum tuum - (Latin) Biblical quote "Do not put the Lord, thy God, to the test."  
> Nom de dieu de merde…! - (French) roughly "For God's sake!" or "Holy shit!"  
> Pronto - (Italian) "Hello" (lit. "Ready") specifically used for answering a phone
> 
> **Thank you for reading! As much as I love sharing this little tale with the community I especially love to hear your thoughts! If you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


	14. Joe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the crash.

Gunshots cracked like fireworks, somewhere close from the sound of it. Joe slowly opened his eyes and relief washed through him at the sight of Nicky hovering above him, cupping his face. There was grass beneath Joe and his back was pressed against something metal.

Seeing Nicky alive and safe always brought a smile to his face. Unfortunately, in this instance, the movement tugged at freshly-knitting wounds scrawled across his cheek and forehead which, being something of a connoisseur by virtue of long experience, he guessed had been cut to shit when his head went through a car window.

Joe winced and the shards of glass crackled free of his skin. It was also hard to breathe, so there were probably some broken ribs in the mix from when Nicky slammed into him. Fantastic.

 _“Yusuf!”_ Nicky’s face lit up, bright with relief, before growing solemn with concern. _“Are you alright? The others said they need your help. We are under attack.”_

 _“I am,_ hayati _,”_ Joe whispered. He tried to raise a hand to cup Nicky’s but even the smallest twitch was enough to tell him the arm was badly broken and still mending. He made do with leaning his cheek into Nicky’s touch, gazing up at him. _“Or I will be, in a moment. Are you injured?”_

 _“I think you broke my fall,”_ Nicky said with a fleeting grin that shifted into an expression of stern apprehension. _“The black chariot has stopped across the field. Booker and Andromache are holding them off, but they said we are short on arrows.”_

That news roused Joe the rest of the way out of his stupor. He winced as the bones of his forearm realigned and popped back into place. _“I need to see what’s happening,”_ Joe wheezed and Nicky moved to let him up as he rose shakily to his feet.

A bullet blew back his hair, passing an inch from his ear.

“Get _down_ , Joe!” Andy shouted and Joe finally caught sight of her, crouched down behind the hood of the Fiat.

“Shit!” Joe dropped to his knees, pain ringing through his body as his broken ribs protested the rough treatment. Beside Andy, Booker knelt, his expression intent and his attention focused on the far side of the field. “What’s happening?”

“The Mercedes followed us off-road but stopped on the far side of the field when we shot back. They’ve been returning fire for a few minutes now. Bastards are armed to the teeth,” Booker said without looking at Joe. “Must have shot a hundred rounds at us and haven’t slowed since. I spotted four of them, but the car is armored and all of our gear except for the pistols is in the trunk. We’re not going to be able to get those out without drawing fire, but so far they seem to be content to keep us pinned down here.”

“Why not come after us?” Joe said. He spotted the pistol Booker had given him was now in Andy’s hand, probably retrieved while he was unconscious.

“Must be our spotless reputations,” Booker grinned humorlessly. “The reward listing called us ‘ghosts’. Said no one but the best should risk taking us on after what happened at the trafficker’s den. My guess is they’re afraid we’re faking to draw _them_ out.”

Joe grunted in acknowledgment. “Endless ammo _and_ an armored car? Either they’re hired pros or jumped-up amateurs looking for a big score.”

“I can tell you which right now,” Booker said dryly. He raised his hand above his head.

A shot rang out. Booker hissed through his teeth and lowered his hand. He held it up to his face for inspection, then looked through the hole at the center of his palm to Joe.

Nicky gave a choked-off noise of horror beside him and Joe grimaced, sharing a look with Booker. The wound was already healing and after a few seconds, Booker shook out his hand and cracked his knuckles to get the feeling back. “So,” Booker pronounced, “not amateurs. At least, their sniper isn’t.”

“Son of a bitch,” Joe snarled. “Cover me while I get the kit bags?”

“With two pistols?” Andy snorted. “Sure, but you don’t get a second chance. At least, not if you don’t want to be target practice. Booker and I are both low.”

“It’s No-Man’s Land out there,” Booker said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do once we’re out of ammo, except maybe rush ‘em and hope they don’t take off screaming while we’re getting up.”

 _“Yusuf, what is happening?”_ Nicky whispered. Apprehension tightened his features and he was still staring at Booker’s hand, now healed except for a circle of raw, pink flesh on the back.

 _“We need our weapons,”_ Joe replied. _“But whoever gets them will probably be killed in the process, even with cover.”_

_“You’re not… Yusuf, you can’t! What if you are killed and don’t wake?”_

Joe smiled wistfully. _“Ah, see? Now you understand. That fear never goes away, Nicolò. But some things are more important.”_ He cupped Nicky’s face and planted a chaste kiss on his cheek. He could feel the last of his broken ribs snap back into place and the tenderness on his forehead fade as the cuts from the window healed to nothing. No time to waste. “Ok, I’m heading out.”

“Trunk’s unlocked,” Andy called after him.

“Happy hunting,” Booker added with an ironic salute, then both were all business. Like a wolf pack sensing a kill, they turned back towards their target, ready to draw fire away from Joe.

Before the two of them rose out of their crouch behind the car, Joe was moving. He managed to reach around and pry open the trunk before he had to move all the way into view, but the kit bags were hundreds of pounds of automatic weapons, ammo, and blades. He would need to clear cover to have the leverage to drag them out.

A bullet whizzed by his ear the second Joe stuck his head out. He dropped low and crept along the bumper of the car, pressing against the side to limit his silhouette, but the trunk door rising triggered a hail of bullets and with a shout, Andy and Booker rose from their crouch, each of their return shots precise, pinging off the hood of the armored car, forcing the gunfire to a halt. There was a distant scream. Sensing his chance, Joe rose from his crouch and got a hand through the loop on the largest kit bag to wrench it out of the back.

The first bullet slammed into his thigh.

Joe’s muscles seized as bone shattered and blood soaked through his pant leg. A scream burst between his clenched teeth, animal and instinctive, there was no keeping it down, and he knew he had seconds before he would be unconscious. No time for finesse. Joe gave up shielding himself against the car and hefted the kit bag to land on the far side of the car with the others.

The second bullet caught him in the shoulder.

Joe’s hand flew up, clenching around the wound on instinct. The other kit bag was jammed down deep in the trunk, and his body shook, but he had to _move._ His hands were already the dusty gray of shock and they shivered as he dug into the back and yanked at the handle of the second bag.

His strength failed. Pain shot up through the shattered bone of his thigh as he dropped to his knees. The bag slid forward as he fell, but though his grip shivered, it remained tight on the handle.

_“Yusuf!”_

Nicky. He couldn’t give up now. If he did, he _knew_ that Nicky would break cover to get to him. Nicky, who didn’t know how to shield himself against heavy fire like this, who wasn’t ready for this kind of pain. Joe yanked the bag the rest of the way and with the last of his strength lobbed towards the others. He stumbled back. Dirt exploded to either side of him and his world went hazy at the edges.

The last bullet caught him in the throat.

Joe choked on his own blood, the hot iron taste of it flooding his mouth. Cold swept his body and then there was grass pressed against his cheek, his fingernails digging into the dirt. A dull impact rocked his body, somewhere by his leg. All sensation was fading, except for the sound of that distant, familiar cry, the one that broke his heart each and every one of the thousands of times he’d heard it while the world darkened around him.

 _Don’t cry,_ he thought senselessly at Nicky’s anguished scream. _It’ll be alright. Don’t cry._

* * *

_“Yusuf, please wake up. Yusuf. Yusuf…”_

Everything hurt, as if someone had taken a drill to his body and filled each hole with molten lead. His nerve endings were on fire but Nicky was calling his name and so Joe opened his eyes though every molecule in his body screamed in protest.

Nicky hovered above him, looking down at Joe. His eyes were wild and his cheeks streaked with tears. Sensation flowed back into Joe’s body along with his life, so he felt Nicky’s hand against his cheek. “Amor mio,” Joe said and tried to nudge his face against Nicky’s palm. But the word barely emerged even as a whisper, and his muscles refused to obey. There was a pulse of heat, of pain in his shoulder, his leg, his back… much more damage than he remembered taking when he went down.

 _“They just kept shooting you, Yusuf,_ ” Nicky sobbed. Only then Joe realized he was still crying, that the warm drops Joe felt on his face were tears and not blood. He couldn’t even move to comfort Nicky. _“You were already dead and… and they wouldn’t stop. Why? Why would they do that? Was it not enough to kill you? Was it not enough to… to…_ ”

Joe smiled wanly. “ _It’s alright, Nicolò. I’m alright,_ ” he rasped through vocal cords barely stitched back together.

 _“It’s not alright!”_ Nicky snarled. His arm dropped from where he’d been scrubbing it over his eyes. _“Why would they hurt… people who have never hurt them? People like you, who were only trying to protect the ones they love?”_

 _Oh. Oh, Nicky, no…_ Joe tried to reach up, to touch Nicky’s face but couldn’t muster the strength. Instead, he clasped Nicky’s hand where it cupped his own cheek and whispered, _“It was a war, Nicolò. It wasn’t your fault.”_

 _“Then whose fault_ was _it?! How will evil ever be cleansed from this world if not one man will stand up against those who commit it?”_ Nicky challenged, voice growing stronger as he continued, _“You said you did not know why he stopped trying to kill you after the third time, Yusuf, but I do. He saw that to murder you again that day—when you did nothing but protect your people—was evil. It was cruel. If the world requires death then it should be quick and… and_ merciful _, and there must be_ penance _after, no matter who it is. Not this. Not…_ mutilating _something beautiful, a child of God, just for the sake of it.”_ Nicky’s jaw tightened and he shook his head, looking clear-eyed down at Joe. _“And I was content to look away. I thought that… as long as it was my fellow soldiers committing those sins and not me, that it would be enough before God. But it’s not. It is not enough for me to stand by and let evil have its way in the hopes that I will remain blameless.”_

Love swept Joe, so strong he felt he would choke on it. If only it wasn’t mixed with this terrible, directionless fear. Anguish contorted Nicky’s face, transforming it, and yet it was like seeing _his_ Nicky for the first time since his memory was lost. _This_ was the man he’d fallen in love with. But, _“Nicolò, what are you…?_ ”

Nicky kissed him. Half-dead on the ground, Joe still couldn’t stop himself from kissing back, there was no pain he would not overcome for this. He summoned just enough strength to clasp the back of Nicky’s neck, to feel him here, now, and not think of what was lost, or what would soon be lost.

 _“I cannot stand by, Yusuf,”_ Nicky said when he pulled away, leaving Joe's lips cold at the loss, and before Joe could do more than frown in confusion, Nicky picked up something from beside him on the ground. There was the flat hiss of steel on leather as he drew his sword.

“Shit!” Joe forced himself onto his elbows and winced as his muscles screamed in protest. _“Nicolò, stop! You’ll never make it over there!”_

Nicky met his eye, his expression grim, and gave a small shrug. _“Someone has to draw them out.”_

“Fuck! Andy, Booker! Nicky’s threatening to head over there with a fucking _sword_!” Joe shouted.

He twisted back so see Booker and Andy busy rooting through the kit bags, a truly horrific number of automatic weapons, handguns, and semi-automatics on the ground before them, along with Nicky's sniper rifle, while they busied themselves checking ammunition and strapping on knives. The two paused to exchange a look.

“Good for him,” Andy said with a shrug and snapped a fresh clip into her pistol.

Joe gaped. “That’s _it?”_

“You two seemed to be having a moment. We didn’t want to interrupt,” Andy said and then added in Ligurian to Nicky, _“So, you’ve decided to make yourself useful? We’ll cover you. Good luck.”_

Nicky flashed her a grim smile. _“Thank you, Andromache. I’m sorry I have been a burden on you and your companions.”_

Andy seemed to consider this, then nodded to herself. _“It’s a start.”_

“Shit, really? Ok, I guess we’re doing this,” Booker said and grabbed for the submachine gun that lay by his side on the ground and he hefted it with a look to Nicky, “ _Are you ready?”_

Nicky nodded back to Booker over where he and Andy crouched at the other end, Booker with the submachine gun, Andy set up with the sniper rifle that would usually be Nicky’s, her pistol holstered in the small of her back.

Then Nicolò looked back at Joe one last time, saying nothing, at least not with words. The blade glinting in hand where he knelt beside the trunk of the car. Then he turned away and broke into a run.

The sound of gunfire exploded, the semi-automatic in Andy’s hand splitting the air like a thunderclap compared to the earlier crack of the pistols. Joe growled in pain and pressed a hand over his ear as the _whine_ of tinnitus started, an instant and familiar friend. Blood leaked from his leg and shoulder, as well as the wounds he didn’t remember receiving while lying dead on the ground. They were bone-deep injuries that the body could not heal as quickly, but he couldn’t just sit here. As painful as it was to watch, he couldn’t turn away, not from Nicky.

Joe hissed in agony as he rolled onto his stomach, clawing his way towards the car, until, with arms that wouldn’t stop shaking, he pulled himself up to gaze after him.

True to their word, Andy and Booker’s fire kept their attackers down. Any glint of a muzzle or flash of skin and they were on it. Dirt exploded to either side of Nicky, and Nicky…

Nicky charged without fear, though he had no armor or shield, and Joe’s heart was in his throat because Nicky didn’t remember the pain of a bullet. He had not suffered through them as year after year they became more accurate, more deadly, and more powerful. But then, few who lived today could imagine the pain of a sword in the gut, and none but those beside him knew what it was like to see one wielded by a Christian knight.

Nicolò had become so much more since the Crusades: a sniper, a dancer, an acrobat, a soldier in an army of four immortals who together could weave a dance of death with skill no mortal could achieve in a single lifetime. But before all that, he was a knight, and that in itself was magnificent to behold.

Even without the weight of his armor, Nicky’s steps thundered across the ground, his expression grim in concentration, and somehow, as if by some miracle, he made it to the far side of the field, to whoever crouched behind the black Mercedes. His sword flashing in the sunlight as he brandished it high.

Then the screaming began. Gunfire crackled, reverberating back to where Joe crouched with Booker and Andy. A brief explosion, a staccato drumbeat that just as quickly went silent once more.

But Nicky did not emerge.

“Fuck,” Joe snarled, panic rising to choke him. His leg spasmed in protest, still tender from the bullet that had crushed the bone to powder. The bleeding had barely slowed. “Fuck, which of these is loaded? I need to get over there!”

“Take mine,” Booker said and passed over the submachine gun. Joe accepted it with a curt nod, not waiting to see if Andy or Booker followed. He was already running.

Silence reigned except for the pounding of his own footsteps on the grass and Joe's own harsh breathing, as the distance to the far side of the field seemed to stretch before him.

When Joe rounded the back of the black Mercedes, there were four bodies on the ground. Three of them were their attackers, one face down on the ground with a bloodstain spreading from the center of his back, another staring at the sky, his last expression one of shock, while a third lay slumped with a hand still clutching the wound at his throat that killed him. Not one showed the mark of more than a single wound delivered with clean, brutal efficiency.

The fourth body was Nicky’s.

His blue-green eyes stared up at the sky, empty, blood staining the grass behind his head, while his chest was riddled with bullet wounds tearing and staining the fabric. His sword lay just outside his reach. A trail of black blood trailed down his face and dripped from his cheek from a messy bullet wound in his temple.

With a choked groan, Joe crashed down to his knees beside Nicky, the submachine gun hanging loose in his hand as he cupped Nicky’s cheek, heedless of the blood. The fear was back, as it was every time he saw Nicky dead on the ground, but with this sight came flooding back the terror he’d felt when Nicky last went down and returned with his life forgotten.

What if this was the last time? What if all they got was a few more days to remember what they had at the beginning? A sort of cosmic justice, a divine joke to remind them where they _should_ have ended their lives long ago, and how time was a wheel, cycling back one last time to the start to remind them of this before it crushed them.

 _“Nicolò,”_ Joe whispered and it didn’t matter how many times this happened, his voice was thick with fear, with love, with all the prayers that built inside him, begging to bring Nicky back, just one more time, or to take Joe as well so they wouldn’t be parted. “ _Nicolò, my love, please wake up.”_

Nicky gasped. His pupils dilated to pinpricks as he stared up at the sky and the color crept back into his cheeks. Each breath was labored at first, evening out as he sucked down air. His eyes found Joe.

Rage tightened Nicky’s jaw and he jolted up from the ground and yanked the submachine gun out of Joe’s hand. He pressed it to his shoulder and stared down the barrel straight at Joe and there was no time to think, his hands were up in front of him, too late. Too late, he saw it so clearly now: each death a reset, taking from him what little he could rebuild with Nicky since the last, and leaving behind the man he first met on the battlefield. The wheel cycled back. Joe was going to die again and again, and Nicky was going to be the one who killed him, just as he was meant to long ago…

One shot.

Joe’s ears rang, deafened by the explosion of the gun so close. He stared down at himself. There was no pain, no bloom of red, and only then did he see that the hate-filled look in Nicky’s eyes was directed slightly to his left.

Cloth rustled and there was the wet sound of a body slumping behind him. Joe turned to see the fourth hitman fall to the ground, body hanging half out of the open car door of the Mercedes, a pistol slipping from his now-lifeless hand. A bullet wound blossomed at the dead-center of his forehead.

Joe whipped back just in time to see Nicky lower the gun, his chest heaving and his eyes wild as he stared up.

“Joe?”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find updates, behind the scenes commentary, and inspiration for this story over on my Tumblr blog [here](https://avelera.tumblr.com/tagged/TOG-fic).
> 
> If you would like an alert for when I publish original novels and short stories, you can sign up [here](http://eepurl.com/dnzuV1).
> 
>   
> **Thank you for reading! As much as I love sharing this little tale with the community I especially love to hear your thoughts! If you can spare a moment, please consider leaving a comment!**


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